SPONSORED FEATURE: VARIAN MEDICAL SYSTEMS
38 CANCER CONTROL 2014
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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
Figure 1: Varian UNIQUE™ system - a cost-effective, efficient and reliable system for
cancer treatment