Swiss Medical Network (SMN) and North Estonia Medical Centre (NEMC) set out to do something deceptively simple: take the waiting out of radiation therapy planning. Under a conventional pathway, generating and approving a plan can take several working days between CT simulation and the first treatment session. With the iRT InstaPlan Solution—combining GE HealthCare’s Intelligent Radiation Therapy (iRT) orchestration with RaySearch’s RayStation TPS—both institutions reported in pilot evaluations that clinically acceptable prostate treatment plans could be produced within minutes of CT acquisition. This accelerated process enables earlier clinical decision-making and allows clinicians to focus on more complex tasks.
“Our objective is to reduce the time it takes for patients to begin treatment. With the InstaPlan Solution, we can obtain a clinically acceptable treatment plan within only a few minutes after CT acquisition, rather than days,” said Prof. Dr. Oscar Matzinger, Head of Radiation Oncology at Swiss Medical Network. To complement the Swiss experience, NEMC reported similar advances, highlighting the scalability of InstaPlan Solution across diverse clinical environments.
SMN operates a multi-site radiation oncology program that faces the full range of challenges common in modern radiation therapy: CT simulation, image management, contouring, planning, quality assurance, and coordination among physicians, medical physicists, and dosimetrists. According to Prof. Dr. Matzinger, in the traditional manual workflow, the time from CT to the first treatment fraction is about five working days—typically 1.5 days for segmentation, 2.5 days for planning, and 1 day for validation, transfer, and patient-specific QA. Each of these days represents waiting for the patient, which can add anxiety, logistical difficulties, and, for certain tumor types, a potential risk of disease progression.
“At NEMC, automation has allowed us to streamline planning without compromising oversight. The InstaPlan Solution helps us reduce inefficiencies and focus more on patient care,” added Dr. Eduard Gershkevitsh of North Estonia Medical Centre.
