1. A method for designing a clinical protocol, the method comprising: creating a plurality of protocol meta-models using a computing device, each of said plurality of protocol meta-models includes at least one list relevant to a designated disease, said at least one list contains a set of patient eligibility criteria and a set of workflow actions, each of said set of patient eligibility criteria includes an attribute associated with the designated disease and an assigned range of values for said attribute to designate if that said patient eligibility criteria is satisfied; selecting at least one protocol meta-model of said plurality of protocol meta-models using the computing device; and generating an intelligent clinical protocol database via said computing device using an authoring tool that encodes one or more of said set of patient eligibility criteria and a protocol schema associated with the selected at least one protocol meta-model and that facilitates entry of one or more of said set of workflow actions into the intelligent clinical protocol database.