About the ACORN Network

Accelerated Community Oncology Research Network, Inc. (ACORN) was founded in 2002 by Drs. Lee Schwartzberg and Kurt Tauer of The West Clinic, P.C., Ted Okon, and Dr. Barry Fortner. They sought to form an oncology-specific research network to address the inefficiencies and burdens of clinical research in community cancer clinics.

Clinical research is often the pet project of one physician in an oncology practice with the regulatory, contracting, data management, reporting, and ient care functions often handled by a single clinical research coordinator. ACORN’s goals include eliminating all of these administrative burdens from the practice so the clinicians can concentrate on treating patients. By centralizing the administrative functions, ACORN provides efficiencies not only for community oncology practices, but also to the clinical trial sponsors. ACORN gives the sponsors a “one stop shop” to run their trials instead of dealing with many individual practices. This saves time (dealing with one instead of many) and money (monitoring at one facility instead of many sites).

In June, 2003 the regulatory and data management personnel of The West Clinic (nine associates) moved to ACORN in order to provide the foundation for the company. In September of that year, the first ACORN Summit was held with the lead research physicians of approximately 10 practices. Today, ACORN practices include over 150 oncologist investigators.