A South Carolina medical informatics team recently won a highly competitive Federal Stimulus grant to develop a statewide, Internet-based network for seriously ill patients looking for help through clinical trials.

The $4.8 million dollar award is a special American Reinvestment and Recovery Act grant called a “Grand Opportunities” or GO grant, also known by its NIH mechanism code RC2. It is the only RC2 award to date in South Carolina, and only one of three such awards nationally issued by the National Library of Medicine.  The project title is An Open Source Research Permissions Framework for South Carolina.

The project team leaders are Dr. Jay Moskowitz, Executive Director of Health Sciences South Carolina (HSSC) and Dr. Iain Sanderson, Director of the Biomedical Informatics Program of the South Carolina Clinical and Translational Research Institute (SCTR). Both hold endowed chairs through the South Carolina Centers of Economic Excellence (COEE) program.

The grant, to be paid out over two years, brings together the state's three major research institutions – USC, MUSC and Clemson. Experts from each school will handle different aspects of the research network. The awardee institution is the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where Dr. Moskowitz holds faculty appointment. Dr. Sanderson is based at MUSC. HSSC is a statewide consortium embracing the three SC research universities and the four largest health provider systems.

Patients will be able to volunteer for clinical trials, get notification of new research related to their condition and give consent to have their tissue used for research. The network, expected to be available in two years at no cost to patients, will have built-in security checks to protect patient privacy. The network will be a step toward improving the overall health of South Carolinians.

Source:  The State, http://www.thestate.com/local/story/972569.html