Our Mission   Top
EmergingMed's mission is to leverage the power of the Internet to increase treatment options for people with serious illnesses and to speed up drug development through increased enrollment in clinical trials.

Our Goal   Top
EmergingMed's goal is to become the central repository of clinical research information in the United States and to provide a fast, simple way for people with serious illnesses to search for and gain access to clinical trial options.

Our Privacy Policy   Top
Our commitment to privacy and security is uncompromising and guides every decision we make. All information submitted to EmergingMed is password protected, confidential and secure. We will never sell or share your personal information. See our  Privacy Policy for more information.

Our Services   Top
EmergingMed offers a free online tool that helps cancer patients find appropriate clinical trials in a matter of minutes.

1. Fill out a patient profile and click "match to trials"

   EmergingMed has created unparalleled matching technology that allows people with serious illnesses and their caregivers to compare a short personal profile to the enrollment criteria of thousands of clinical trials in a matter of minutes. The matching is performed in a secure environment that protects the confidentiality of both the person filling out the patient profile and the organization conducting the research.

   The list of clinical trials that match a patient profile is presented in an unbiased format – privately sponsored and public trials are given equal weight – so that the user may decide on the best option for their own situation. EmergingMed includes only those trials that have been approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the hospital or doctor's office where the trial is taking place. See About Clinical Trials for more details. In some instances, such as when a user enters the EmergingMed website from a cancer center subscriber website, the trials administered in that cancer center might appear before other trials.

2. Review your trial matches

   We encourage you to print out the trials that you match to so that you may discuss them with your physician or another healthcare professional. You might also take a look at the "Therapies in Development" section of the EmergingMed website for short articles describing promising new cancer therapies with a link to the relevant medical journal abstract.

3. Submit an application -- our staff will help you contact the clinical trial

   If you decide to submit an application to clinical trials that you have matched to in the EmergingMed database, you can elect to be contacted by phone or email by EmergingMed staff. An EmergingMed Member Services representative will first call you to verify your interest in the clinical trial(s). The Member Services representative will then contact the trial administrator and make arrangements for you to speak to the trial administrator. We strive to contact by phone the same day an application is submitted. If email contact is selected, the user will receive a response within 48 hours at their email address.

   EmergingMed will persist on behalf of the prospective study participant until a connection is made with the trial administrator. After that connection is made, EmergingMed staff may follow up with the study participant and the trial coordinator to determine whether the patient is enrolled in the study.

Our History   Top
After months of interviews with patients, advocates, caregivers and researchers, EmergingMed was founded in January 2000 to offer patients and their families a fast and easy way to find and understand available treatment options. The website officially launched in December 2000 and has been steadily increasing the number of patients matched to clinical trials since then.

Our Management   Top

Our Medical Advisory Board   Top
EmergingMed works closely with distinguished physicians and clinical researchers who help to oversee our content, policies and procedures. The following is a list of our oncology advisory board members:

Our Patient/Advocate Advisory Board   Top
EmergingMed also works closely with patients, families and patient advocates who have direct experience with cancer and cancer research. Many leaders in the advocacy community provide ongoing feedback on the barriers faced by patients and families trying to consider clinical trials as one of their treatment options.

Content   Top
EmergingMed features articles (click Standard Therapies or Therapies in Development) highlighting noteworthy research developments. Content is selected by our editorial staff and medical advisors, and presented with patient-friendly summaries that translate difficult medical information into lay terms. Overviews of treatment options are presented as feature articles that detail many of the standard therapies for a particular illness, often in the voices of patients, researchers, physicians and other caregivers. Users can find links to additional information and support in EmergingMed’s Resources section.

If you would like to submit an idea for article, call our editorial department at 877-601-8601. We pride ourselves in our journalistic integrity, so the decision to include content as well as the final edits are solely the responsibility of our editorial director. To learn more about our editorial policy click here.

How We Get Paid   Top
The matching and referral service is free to patients and physicians. EmergingMed receives monthly subscription fees from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to list and maintain their clinical trials in our database.

As a public service, EmergingMed lists, matches and refers patients to clinical trials sponsored by the government and other not-for-profit organizations free of charge.

Sponsorship   Top
EmergingMed is owned and operated by EmergingMed.com, Inc. at 160 Madison Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10016.

The company was created through investments from the founders, two venture capital firms (JT Venture Partners and CK Capital), and a number of private individuals. To ensure that our technology and customer services were unbiased and impartial, EmergingMed chose not to accept investments from pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies. In addition, EmergingMed does not accept advertising or sponsorship of content on its website, nor does it use "banner" or "pop-up" advertising on its website.

Strategic Alliances   Top
EmergingMed is actively seeking alliance partners that will help people with serious illnesses and their caregivers find and use our matching and referral service. We are also seeking partners that will help add to our growing database of cancer clinical trials. For information about how to become an alliance partner, click   here to email our Business Development department.

Become an Advisor   Top
Talking with patients, caregivers, and advocates to assess their needs and concerns about clinical trials and treatment information has been EmergingMed's practice since the Company's inception. Our belief is that by working closely with the very population our website has been built to serve, we will create a better and more responsible service. Indeed, feedback from patients, caregivers and advocates has helped us tailor our content and build our matching technology and it continues to be the basis for enhancements to our website.

If you would like to participate in EmergingMed focus groups, join our patient advisory team, contribute to our FAQ section or simply offer us feedback, please contact us via email at:  ContactUs@emergingmed.com.

Join Our Team   Top
EmergingMed is a great company for people who want to enjoy their job and have a positive impact on public health. Contact us to submit your resume and tell us more about how you can contribute to our team and our mission.

Letter from the CEO   Top
Late one Sunday evening In January 1999, my husband called me on his cell phone from a taxi. He was seriously ill and on his way to the hospital. The doctors were able to stabilize him temporarily, but they recommended additional surgery. My husband refused to undergo what would be a long, difficult operation that would require months of recovery. I was obviously upset - not only about my husband's condition, but also about his apparent unwillingness to accept treatment.

I was torn between the competing desires to respect his choices and for him to get treatment immediately. I began to search for treatment options, mainly through the Internet, but found the information presented too simplistic, too scientific, or too voluminous. By chance, a friend in California sent my husband an article about an alternative surgery that had only recently been developed. This surgery was being performed only a mile from our home in New York, yet we had never heard about it. My husband underwent the surgery, and today is doing fine.

We were lucky, but access to new treatment options, including clinical trials, should not be serendipitous. This is a time when pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies and the government have enlisted the support of nearly 50,000 doctors to conduct more than 10,000 clinical trials each year -- almost one-third are designed to test new drugs and therapies for cancer patients. Patients and families should have a way to find these new drugs and therapies without having to depend on luck.

After months of interviews with patients, advocates, caregivers, and researchers, Sarah Hutter, Glenn Rice and I founded EmergingMed.com in January 2000 to offer patients and their families a fast and easy way to find and understand available treatment options.

We have created the EmergingMed online matching and referral system to reliably connect patients directly to the doctors conducting clinical trials in a matter of minutes.

This personal journey, which started with a phone call from the back of a taxi, will hopefully benefit many others by providing more options for their own treatment and by accelerating the clinical research process that develops new drugs and therapies for all of us.

Sincerely,