This January, I'll be running the Dopey Challenge during Walt Disney World's Marathon Weekend.  Lafe and I will be following that up with running the Half Marathon at Disneyland California the following weekend.  As we did last year, we want to run those miles for a worthy cause.

Most, if not all of us have been impacted by cancer.  As a survivor of thyroid cancer, this is a cause that is very important to me.  Lafe's mom is a breast cancer survivor and my mom was taken way too soon by cancer.  I can think of a long list of other family, friends, and aquaintences who were taken by cancer, currently battling cancer, or have survived cancer.  The Dragon Master Foundation is leveraging technology to enable collaboration, cooperation, and collection of large amounts of data around cancer to facilitate research with the ultimate goal finding a cure!

Here is the highlights / quick info about Dragon Master Initiative:

• When he was 16, David Pearson, the inspiration behind Dragon Master Initiative, was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme, brain cancer. During his treatment, it became apparent that different hospitals and treatment centers were essentially silos. His family discovered a severe frustration in the cancer research community - a lack of resources to share medical research data between doctors and researchers.
• Clinical trial results take time, but time is limited in moments like these. Hoping to turn the loss of David into his legacy, they set forth to bridge the gap between isolated medical processes and real-time clinical research data. From this, the Dragon Master Initiative was born - a platform that would help solve the riddle of cancer through streamlined data sharing between researchers and institutions.
• The Dragon Master Initiative seeks to expand CAVATICA, a free research tool that enables doctors and scientists to instantly share, search and analyze patient data. Expanding this tool will allow researchers to use big data to identify patterns and further their research to uncover cures for cancer more quickly.
• Through CAVATICA, real-time feedback is shared, allowing researchers to modify the trials as they move forward instead of waiting for the results. The platform provides researchers with the ability to find out what works and fails, faster. The initiative also connects patients and their families with the resources they need to help them get through the journey with as much support as possible.