Introduction

Abstract

Section 1 of this book sets forth a vision of a national cancer information and knowledge environment that will greatly accelerate moving cancer discoveries into cancer practice. This environment supports the next generation of clinical trials from the dawn of a new idea to the design, activation, and conduct of a trial, on through the use and creative re-use of all the outcomes of studies to influence subsequent clinical research. The National Cancer Institute has described a Cancer Informatics Infrastructure (CII) that exploits the National Information Infrastructure to make the clinical trial processes truly frictionless—a CII that builds on existing tools and initiatives to serve the needs of the cancer community.