caBIG™ Feature – October 2006

Clinical Trial Matchmaking Made Easy

To use BCT, patients fill out an online Personal Health Record (PHR) that details their medical history and case information. This information is then cross-referenced against existing clinical trial criteria for matching. Patients can find matches by logging onto the site and checking their file. Patients initiate contact with trial organizers, either by contacting them directly or inviting them to view their PHR online in BCT's secure Message Center. There are 32 active San Francisco Bay Area/Sacramento clinical trials currently available on the BCT Website, with more than 700 patients registered in total.

"The majority of patients will find out about a clinical trial from their primary oncologist. Other patients who want to know even more than their primary oncologist has told them will seek ways of independently searching for trials," said Elly Cohen, BCT Project Manager. "Some patients are overwhelmed by the amount of information that they have to cope with. When a patient is sick and has little time or energy available, it could be a very cumbersome process."

BCT originally developed a prototype of the matching system in conjunction with the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center and then showed it to a team from the National Cancer Institute Center for Bioinformatics (NCICB). The team recognized that this concept could be developed into an important patient portal that could be used across the spectrum of all cancer clinical trials. As a result, BCT was made compatible with the caBIG™ system, and the underlying technology—called caMatch—is now openly available to anyone. Another version of caMatch that can take patient information directly from an electronic health record or other electronic source is currently underway.

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