Press Releases

Congratulations to these innovators who are working to use the latest technology to make cancer more understandable and personalized!

The Ask Dory! application helps patients locate nearby clinical trials, integrate data from www.ClinicalTrials.gov and uses an entropy-based decision tree algorithm.

Wil Yu, ONC’s special assistant for innovations – “We seek breakthrough solutions to nuanced issues; some are ready for the marketplace and some are prototypes, but all will have a great potential to benefit Americans. Ask Dory and My Cancer Genome are examples of results that innovation challenges can incentivize and deliver – we’re really excited to see their impact.”

Such websites contain huge amount of information which is often difficult to access and understand for the average patient who is overwhelmed by the maze of information written in scientific and medical jargon. ‘Dory‘ will help the patient to get out that kind of impasse. Dory is an online interactive tool that asks the patients personalized questions and help them find the right clinical trial near them.

TrialX is trying to make it easier for patients and researchers to find each other… TrialX is also one of the first companies that connects to a patient’s personal health record (PHR)…The company has arrangements with the two other pioneers in this field, Microsoft (HealthVault) and Google (GoogleHealth)…Another entry into TrialX is Twitter, the social networking site that allows people to broadcast messages of 140 words or less…TrialX just made an agreement with CenterWatch, one of the world’s largest online databases of active clinical trials…TrialX iPhone app lets patients and doctors search for clinical trials by location, indication or treatment, share it with friends or family, and call a clinical trial investigator.

Beyond simple keyword matching, another use of semantics and language technologies is to find matches between people and their needs. This application [TrialX] uses advanced medical ontologies to combine electronic health records with user-generated information to match people with potentially helpful clinical trials.

TrialX, which started as an online matchup between clinical trial organizers and participants, has expedited this courtship even further by opening up its forum to Twitter, and they’re making a nice profit while doing it.