The Clinical Trials Patient Matching Service is a new resource giving cancer patients, their families and friends, and health care providers an easier, quicker, and more effective way to find out about clinical trials and gain access to trials that best meet their medical and personal needs.By gathering information from the patients, the service will compile a list of trials the individual patient is eligible for and contact information for those trial sites.  The service will cut down on the work the patient has to do to find potentially lifesaving treatment.  Enrollment in clinical trials is currently very low, in part because patients have difficulty finding trials that meet their needs and because researchers have difficulty finding patients eligible for their trials.  Increasing participation in clinical trials will benefit today’s cancer patients who will receive either the current standard of care or the new and possibly more effective investigational treatment.By helping more patients find and enroll in clinical trials, this program will also help speed the progress of discovery and approval of new approaches to defeat cancer.  The service is available either by phone (1-800-ACS-2345) or online (www.cancer.org).Online, links from the homepage and the “Making Treatment Decisions” section lead to information about clinical trials in general, about the patient matching service, and to the interactive questionnaires that are the interface of the matching application.There is also a new tab on the left hand side of home page, “Find a Clinical Trial” By calling the 800-number, cancer patients will be referred to the new service by the NCIC (National Cancer Information Center) Cancer Information Specialists.  NCIC Clinical Trial Information Specialists will enter the patient’s clinical data into the matching application just like those who access the service via the Internet.  Patients or their relatives or friends will answer questions about the patient’s cancer type, stage of the disease, general state of health, and previous treatment.  Based on this information, the matching application will provide a list of clinical trials most likely to be pertinent to the patient’s condition.  The user can then get more information about the individual trials, including the treatment being tested (both patient-language summaries and detailed health professional versions are provided) and the location of the trial.When using the service online, the patient can call the NCIC to speak with a Clinical Trial Information Specialists, and/or request a call from the NCIC at a time of their choosing.  At that time, the online user will experience the same interaction the phone user will:  the NCIC staff will review more detailed eligibility criteria for the trials selected by the user, and can then provide the names and phone numbers of the trial site staff.  They can also send a customized booklet containing trial descriptions and questions for the patient to discuss with his/her physician.  NCIC staff can transfer and introduce the user to the trial site staff.