Radiation therapy firm Varian Medical Systems has created an interactive online group in which clinicians can share radiotherapy or radiosurgery treatment plans.
Hosted on Varian's OncoPeer cloud community, the RapidPlan model-sharing group is open to Varian customers, and it allows clinicians to share RapidPlan models that can improve the efficiency and quality of treatment models and cancer care across multiple institutions, the firm said. The first RapidPlan model shared on OncoPeer is a stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) treatment of lung cancer that comes from the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre in Glasgow, U.K.
In other Varian news, the firm is supplying advanced medical linear accelerators to six hospitals in Ethiopia. The Clinac iX systems will be the first such devices offering treatment to cancer patients in the country of more than 90 million people.
Varian will supply the treatment systems to Ethiopian university hospitals in the cities of Harar, Mek'ele, Jima, Hawassa, Gondar, and Addis Ababa. The first phase of the country's cancer project is intended to start offering clinical treatments by the end of this year.
The Clinac iX systems will deliver RapidArc treatments with image-guidance tools on each system. Each site will have an Eclipse system for treatment planning and three Aria oncology information system workstations. In addition, each hospital will have two radiotherapy bunkers to enable future expansion.
Varian and Elsmed, one of its local representatives, are also working with the Ethiopian government to establish clinical education and training resources in the country.
