Amid a growing shortage of clinical trial participants -- especially among adult cancer patients, minorities and adolescents -- medical centers and other health care groups are launching Internet-based programs aimed at matching patients with clinical trials and educating patients and physicians about the benefits of medical research, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The government's ClinicalTrials.gov site lets users conduct broad searches for clinical trials and locations. The Web site includes more than 55,000 trials in 155 countries.
Meanwhile, EmergingMed, a for-profit service, compares patients' brief personal profiles with the enrollment criteria for thousands of clinical trials. Trial searches can be narrowed by disease stage and prior treatments, and EmergingMed consultants call registered patients when new trials they qualify for emerge.
The EmergingMed tool, which is free to consumers, charges medical centers, advocacy groups and research sponsors. The firm does not make money for recruiting clinical trial participants and does not disclose personal data collected on the site, the Journal reports.
Today, Revolution Health announced a partnership with EmergingMed to offer the service on its Web site.
Other Efforts
Large medical centers are developing their own Web sites aimed at educating and recruiting area patients, the Journal reports.
For example, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has launched an interactive Web site that lets patients view video interviews with physicians and other patients who have participated in clinical trials.
"Our goal is to provide information that helps patients reduce the fear of participating in clinical research so that they can make well-considered, informed decisions," Samuel Jacobs, associate director for clinical investigations at UPMC's cancer institute, said (Landro, Wall Street Journal, 5/14).