FinalAwards

Las Vegas, May 12 –TrialCheck®, the on-line cancer clinical trial navigation and patient matching service developed by the nonprofit Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups, won 2008 “Best in Show” honors from Consumer Health World, a national organization focused on improving consumer-directed healthcare. Competing for the top honor from among competitors in eight categories, TrialCheck® also received the award for Best Application for Enhancing Patient Access for Information.

The Coalition accepted the awards at a ceremony during the National Conference on Healthcare Consumerism in Las Vegas.

“We are extremely proud to be receiving these honors,” said Robert Comis, M.D., president and chairman of the Coalition. “TrialCheck® fills the need for highly reliable information on cancer clinical trials – an important treatment option that many patients and physicians overlook.”

TrialCheck® offers cancer patients and caregivers quick, simple access to reliable, unbiased, and easy-to-understand information about cancer clinical trials. Patients use the information to discuss cancer clinical trials as a potential treatment option with their physician.

With TrialCheck®, patients and caregivers log on at CancerTrialsHelp.org (the official Web site of the Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups), or through the Web sites of TrialCheck® collaborators, including the American Cancer Society (www.cancer.org). By answering a quick series of questions, patients receive a downloadable list of trial matches based on zip code, gender, disease type and stage, age and cancer impact on their daily activities.

The Coalition’s unique collaborations with major patient advocacy organizations are a direct outgrowth of its nonprofit status, which ensures that patients have free-of-charge access to information on all cancer clinical trials currently recruiting patients – regardless of the trial sponsor.

The most frequently updated cancer clinical trials database in the U.S., TrialCheck® data is considered “best of breed” by leading cancer clinical trial experts. Data is gathered from the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Physician Data Query (PDQ®), the National Institutes of Health’s clinicaltrials.gov, the Clinical Trial Cooperative Groups and the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. It features a real-time Web-service connection with the NCI’s national Regulatory Support System (RSS), direct downloads from NCI’s PDQ® database, and quality controls that increase data reliability and accuracy.

TrialCheck® is the only system to add and remove all federally approved Cooperative Group trials in real-time. It received a prestigious Bronze-level certification award from the NCI’s cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) network as one of the few systems capable of supporting NCI’s efforts to fully integrate the nation’s cancer clinical trial databases.


Contact: Suzanne Myers Director of eBusiness Marketing (215) 789-3613 smyers@CancerTrialsHelp.org	Pat Garrison Media Relations 973-313-0554 patgarrison@optonline.net
TrialCheck® Wins ‘Best in Show’ from National Consumer Healthcare Group
Cancer Clinical Trial Navigation and Matching Service Honored for Enhancing Patient Access to Important Treatment Option
Las Vegas, May 12 –TrialCheck®, the on-line cancer clinical trial navigation and patient matching service developed by the nonprofit Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups, won 2008 “Best in Show” honors from Consumer Health World, a national organization focused on improving consumer-directed healthcare. Competing for the top honor from among competitors in eight categories, TrialCheck® also received the award for Best Application for Enhancing Patient Access for Information. The Coalition accepted the awards at a ceremony during the National Conference on Healthcare Consumerism in Las Vegas. “We are extremely proud to be receiving these honors,” said Robert Comis, M.D., president and chairman of the Coalition. “TrialCheck® fills the need for highly reliable information on cancer clinical trials – an important treatment option that many patients and physicians overlook.” TrialCheck® offers cancer patients and caregivers quick, simple access to reliable, unbiased, and easy-to-understand information about cancer clinical trials. Patients use the information to discuss cancer clinical trials as a potential treatment option with their physician. With TrialCheck®, patients and caregivers log on at CancerTrialsHelp.org (the official Web site of the Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups), or through the Web sites of TrialCheck® collaborators, including the American Cancer Society (www.cancer.org). By answering a quick series of questions, patients receive a downloadable list of trial matches based on zip code, gender, disease type and stage, age and cancer impact on their daily activities. The Coalition’s unique collaborations with major patient advocacy organizations are a direct outgrowth of its nonprofit status, which ensures that patients have free-of-charge access to information on all cancer clinical trials currently recruiting patients – regardless of the trial sponsor. The most frequently updated cancer clinical trials database in the U.S., TrialCheck® data is considered “best of breed” by leading cancer clinical trial experts. Data is gathered from the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Physician Data Query (PDQ®), the National Institutes of Health’s clinicaltrials.gov, the Clinical Trial Cooperative Groups and the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. It features a real-time Web-service connection with the NCI’s national Regulatory Support System (RSS), direct downloads from NCI’s PDQ® database, and quality controls that increase data reliability and accuracy. TrialCheck® is the only system to add and remove all federally approved Cooperative Group trials in real-time. It received a prestigious Bronze-level certification award from the NCI’s cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) network as one of the few systems capable of supporting NCI’s efforts to fully integrate the nation’s cancer clinical trial databases.
About the Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups
The Coalition is a network of the 10 federally funded cancer Cooperative Groups, cancer centers, academic medical centers, community hospitals, physicians, and more than 40 patient advocacy groups. A nonprofit organization founded in 1997, the Coalition was chartered to increase participation in high-quality cancer clinical trials, thereby accelerating development of new cancer therapies.