The National Cancer Institute has developed Web-based tools that could give cancer researchers collaborating over the Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) access to hundreds of thousands of new patients to study.
Using the technology, the cancer-fighting agency hopes to tap an army of 1 million women now being recruited for a national breast cancer population study.
NCI is collaborating with the Susan Love Research Foundation and the Avon Foundation, both of which fund work to eradicate breast cancer, to recruit the patients. So far, 300,000 women have enrolled to provide health information and tissue or blood samples for research.
The Web-based tool will give researchers almost immediate access to the active patients via the caBIG cancer research sharing network. "Researchers will be able to ask questions of the enrollees almost in real time and begin to get responses also in almost real time," said Ken Buetow, director of NCI's Center for Bioinformatics and Information Technology.
The breast cancer study is an example of how NCI is using standards and collaboration to expand biomedical research and widen its circle of users, he explained at an Oct. 5 conference on cancer systems sponsored by the Institute of Medicine.
"We need to have data in disparate standards more accessible to be able to use it," Buetow said. "And we need to establish more collaborative activities among organizations in different silos by using IT as the electronic glue so each group can achieve its goals."
To facilitate the effort, NCI revised caBIG software that matched clinical researchers with individuals wanting to participate in clinical trials, he said.
The Web-based application lets researchers form and maintain large breast cancer disease databases. Thousands of users will be able to access the database simultaneously to review and edit personal oncology information using just their Web browser. NCI will add related studies to the Web site to enrich the available information.
"Clinical researchers will systematically be able to collect patient outcomes with a partnership, like the Love Army," Buetow said."We're on a path of convergence. The question is the rate that convergence will occur," he said, adding, "Cancer research is an example of where that is happening."
