Newswise — HOUSTON and PALO ALTO, Calif. ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Varian today announced a new strategic collaboration to develop an integrated software platform to streamline review of radiation oncology treatment plans.

The goal of the platform is to establish an efficient framework to connect participating sites to a central database, allowing MD Anderson physicians to host collaborative review sessions around treatment plans and to communicate plan changes back to physicians. As the platform matures, it has the potential to be deployed at all MD Anderson locations and across MD Anderson Cancer Network®.

“Radiation oncology is a highly technical specialty that relies on the interoperability of a variety of hardware and software components,” said Albert Koong, M.D., Ph.D., professor and division head of Radiation Oncology at MD Anderson. “We believe the development of this unified platform with Varian will enable expansion of our radiation oncology quality standards to provide the best available care to more patients.”

MD Anderson Cancer Network, a program of MD Anderson Cancer Center, collaborates with community hospitals and health care systems around the globe to provide higher quality and advanced care to patients in the communities in which they live.

In addition to the software platform, the partnership will work to develop evidence-based tools to improve the analysis of various quality measures, with a focus on:

  • Minimizing the volume of radiation dose distributed to nearby healthy organs, resulting in fewer side effects for patients
  • Automating the comparison of treatment plans to MD Anderson and national quality criteria, enabling the development of new standard value and safety metrics
  • Decreasing the time needed to review radiation treatment plans, improving efficiency and expanding access

“We are honored to work with MD Anderson on developing a new software platform that helps ensure patients across the MD Anderson Cancer Network receive a higher standard of care regardless of location,” said Corey Zankowski, senior vice president, Oncology Software Solutions, Varian. “Innovative partnerships like this will help us achieve our vision of a world without fear of cancer.”

 

- 30 -

 

About Varian

At Varian, we envision a world without fear of cancer. For more than 70 years, we have developed, built and delivered innovative cancer care technologies and solutions for our clinical partners around the globe to help them treat millions of patients each year. With an Intelligent Cancer Care approach, we are harnessing advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics to enhance cancer treatment and expand access to care. Our 9,200 employees across 70 countries keep the patient and our clinical partners at the center of our thinking as we power new victories in cancer care. Because, for cancer patients everywhere, their fight is our fight. For more information, visit http://www.varian.com and follow @VarianMedSys on Twitter.

About MD Anderson The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston ranks as one of the world's most respected centers focused on cancer patient care, research, education and prevention. The institution’s sole mission is to end cancer for patients and their families around the world. MD Anderson is one of only 50 comprehensive cancer centers designated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). MD Anderson is ranked No.1 for cancer care in U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Hospitals” survey. It has ranked as one of the nation’s top two hospitals for cancer care since the survey began in 1990, and has ranked first 15 times in the last 18 years. MD Anderson receives a cancer center support grant from the NCI of the National Institutes of Health (P30 CA016672).