Standards and collaboration are helping to expand biomedical research and broaden its reach. The National Cancer Institute has revised the Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) software that matches researchers with individuals wanting to participate in clinical trials, permitting researcher access to hundreds of thousands of new patients.
The target is an army of one million women now being recruited for a breast cancer population study, according to a report. NCI is collaborating with the Susan Love Research Foundation and the Avon Foundation in the recruitment effort. Some 300,000 women have enrolled to provide health information and tissue or blood samples.
The Internet-based application lets researchers create large databases of breast cancer disease. Thousands of users will be able to access the database simultaneously to review and edit personal oncology information using an Internet browser. NCI will also contribute related studies.
- read the report