ACT!, that computer- and kiosk-based interactive consumer health resource to make the latest in clinical trials available to the general public, recently expanded its database.

And no one noticed.

“Which is exactly what we wanted,” said ACT!’s primary developer Larry Afrin, M.D. To Afrin, no one noticing means no glitches. “We haven’t discovered a single problem with the new version yet,” Afrin said. “So far, all of our many months of development and testing seem to be paying off.”

Afrin took the database-driven version of ACT! live March 4. Sami Shaban, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biometry and Epidemiology, was the lead developer on the new version. To complement ACT!’s general tutorial on “What is cancer?” team member Nathalie Maitre, Ph.D. did the principal work on the new tutorial, specifically on breast cancer, and is now hard at work on a tutorial on lung cancer. Other team members include systems manager Barbara Slater and developers Omar Matar (also a Ph.D. candidate in Biometry and Epidemiology) and John Gentry (first year medical student and one of the principal architects of ACT!’s look and feel).

“The new version is critical to the ability of the project to expand to serve other medical disciplines and other research centers,” Afrin said. So far, ACT! kiosks, located in the pharmacy at the North Charleston Wal-Mart store and on the first floor of the Hollings Cancer Center, only display information about cancer. The project’s goals, supported with funding from Ortho-Biotech, are to encompass other medical disciplines in its listing of current clinical trials, to invite other institutions to include their clinical trials, and to make the information even more available to the general public with the addition of kiosks in other health care facilities, starting in Sumter, Beaufort, Greenville and Columbia.

MUSC departments expressing interest in listing clinical trials in the ACT! kiosks include Psychiatry, Rheumatology, and Gynecology, Afrin said. “I met with an enthusiastic representative from (the Department of) Psychiatry last week. She will be presenting the opportunity to the department’s researchers for discussion later this month.” Afrin notes that individual researchers can choose to join ACT! and go on line as they wish; it won’t be necessary for all the researchers in a department to join as a group.

“These departments seem to be attracted by the fact that the only cost to them in participating in ACT! is the small amount of time it will take a staff member to write the material for the studies they want to include in ACT!” Afrin said. “And, of course, the time it will take to respond to the resulting inquiries from the public — which is what we want, of course.”

Every study in ACT! is described by answers to seven basic questions: What is the purpose of the study? Who can participate? Who can’t participate? What are the benefits of participating? What are the risks of participating? If I’m in the study, what will I have to do? and How long will I be in the study?

Afrin said he has received inquiries from Duke University Cancer Center’s clinical trials program and will be scheduling visits to Duke and to cancer centers in Columbia and Greenville, which also have expressed interest in joining the ACT! program. With the expansion to other centers, an “eighth question” will be added to each study: Where can I get into the study?

Hits to the ACT! website (http://act.musc.edu/) continue at a rate of about 20,000 per week, and contacts from the public are running from one to three a day, mostly by e-mail, Afrin said.