travel to a reference centre of excellence in Turkey for clinical
training provided by clinicians coordinated by Varian and
supervised by local staff. "After this they will then return to
their hospitals, where a Varian-trained local consultant will
support them," says Jose-Manuel Valentim, Director of
Global Education Programmes. "We will then have weekly
conference calls."
Varian is also initiating an Access to Care programme in
Vietnam, in partnership with the National Reference Hospital
(K Hospital) and the country's ministry of health. "There are
no university courses for radiotherapy in Vietnam, so
practitioners tend to learn how to do it by simply working in a
clinical environment," says Valentim. "We are bringing the
academic content to them via a Web platform and
establishing a structured internship. We will also have the
Access to Care programme materials translated into
Vietnamese for them."
As a pilot project aimed at education within the country's
health care sector, up to nine Varian Access to Care courses in
Vietnam will train 30 people - 10 radiation oncologists, 10
medical physicists and 10 radiotherapy technicians. A similar
Varian programme is planned for 2014 in Russia, in
conjunction with the state SMBA Hospital and in Algeria, in
conjunction with the state CPMC Hospital. Other projects
are now being developed to address the needs of Africa with
initiatives starting in Ghana and South Africa.
Another Access to Care initiative involves an exclusive
agreement between Varian and LaraNara, the Swedish
makers of a well-known educational software that hosts
academic content specific to radiation oncology. "A lot of
Swedish clinicians have been trained on
LaraNara, which generally takes the form of
distance learning because of the size of
Sweden, and the programme has also been
rolled out in India via a collaboration with a
hospital in Chennai," says Valentim. "Varian
has translated the LaraNara content into
English and signed an exclusive agreement
to run LaraNara programmes, initially for
doctors, then technicians and finally for
medical physicists by the end of 2014."
UNIQUE radiotherapy system
Varian has supported these educational
initiatives by introducing a treatment
system aimed specifically at cancer clinics in
developing countries. Since the UNIQUE
linear accelerator (Figure 1) was introduced
as the world's first low-energy radiotherapy
system with image-guidance and RapidArc® treatment
capabilities, it has made advanced care more affordable and
more widely available to cancer patients around the world.
The UNIQUE system represents a complete cost-effective
radiation oncology solution featuring all components and
services to build a state-of-the-art radiation therapy cancer
centre. RapidArc volumetric modulated arc therapy enables
advanced image-guided treatments to be delivered in a
fraction of the time needed for older "step-and-shoot"
intensity-modulated radiotherapy treatments.
"This package is truly a unique offering for developing
countries," says Kolleen Kennedy, President of Varian's
Oncology Systems business. "We added high-tech imageguidance
and arc therapy tools to a low-energy platform
together with our treatment planning and information
management software so that technology for fast, state-ofthe-art
cancer treatments can be made available to
treatment centres at a cost around US$ 2 million." l
SPONSORED FEATURE: VARIAN MEDICAL SYSTEMS
CANCER CONTROL 2015 49
For more information
Varian Medical Systems International AG
Hinterbergstrasse 14
CH-6330 Cham, Switzerland
phone: +41 41 749 88 44
info.europe@varian.comurope" target="_blank" title="Visit info.europe">info.europe@varian.com
www.varian.com
Figure 1: Varian UNIQUE™ system - a cost-effective, efficient and reliable system for
cancer treatment