Technical Conditions and Organizational Aspects for Remote Treatment Planning: a Developing Country’s Perspective

Abstract: Radiotherapy (RT) is the most common treatment for cancer. The state-of- the-art modality for RT is the linear accelerator. However, the availability for linear accelerators in the developing world is limited due to costs, infrastructure and need for educated personnel. The development in telecommunica- tions can help to increase the availability by connecting radiation RT-centers and have a central treatment planning unit. Scandinavian Care is a com- pany that builds RT-centers in developing countries and has a project in India where three centers should to be connected. The thesis objectives were to evaluate technical conditions and discuss or- ganizational aspects for remote treatment planning applied on Scandinavian Care’s project in India. The technical conditions were evaluated with two models derived from Swedish case studies. The models were analyzed using a SWOT-model. The organizational aspects were divided into the organiza- tion of medical physicists and three importtant communication channels. The thesis concludes that the technical conditions are possible for the project in India. The best model depends on the frequency of disturbances in the WAN-connection and patient throughput sensitivity. The organization of medical physicists suggests a rotation schedule to promote education, infor- mal communication and variation of tasks. Telemedical conferences and use of software possibilities could ease the feedback.