Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, June 3, 2016 – IBA (Ion Beam Applications SA), the world’s leading provider of proton therapy solutions for the treatment of cancer, recently organized the first of its kind User Meeting on Software Integration. The meeting was organized as a multi-vendor/user group meeting alongside other top ven-dors of Treatment Planning Systems (TPS) and Oncology Information Systems (OIS).

Effective Software Integration is key to effective operations, but it can be a challenge to get all the key players gathered together. IBA's solution is multiple vendor compatible, so the company decided to take the lead and address this topic by bringing users and vendors together. The main concept of the Software Integration User Meeting was to bring together all parties in order to share knowledge and experience in the use of specific TPS and OIS in combination with IBA Proton Therapy systems. Separate sessions on the different TPS and OIS com-binations were organized, each featuring in-depth discussions on specific applications. Each vendor presented their latest development roadmap and users got involved in fruitful and enriching conversations.

Sofie Gillis, Clinical Solutions Director from IBA, concluded: “This first Proton Software Integration User Meet-ing was a great opportunity to share experience between vendors and customers. Each of our customers has different needs. By offering flexible solutions, our customers can choose the system that matches their needs. This is of tremendous importance to us and we will continue to work with our partners to meet those needs.”

Frederic Dessy, Clinical Solutions Manager from IBA and Co-Chairman of the DICOM RT ion meeting, com-ments on another regular activity of IBA: "We are honored to co-chair the regular DICOM meeting; with the DI-COM RT meetings we have already taken steps to improve information sharing. We see this as another important contribution to continuous improvement of workflow optimization and future of integration of TPS and OIS.”

Zuofeng Li, DSc, Physics Director, University of Florida Health Proton Therapy Institute and IBA’s customer: “Robust integration of radiotherapy software systems, including the treatment planning system, oncology sys-tem, and the delivery system, has been a long standing goal of the field, with efforts dating back to the 1990’s in x-ray radiotherapy where we have had some limited success. IBA is to be congratulated for organizing the IBA TPS OIS user meeting, the first ever such meeting that allows broad user participation and interaction with soft-ware developers and marketing managers of TPS, OIS and PTS venders in this process. Meetings like these takes the radiation therapy integration effort to a higher level, and will undoubtedly serve to improve the safety, quality and efficiency of proton therapy delivery. I look forward to continued participation in this process.”

The first Software Integration User Meeting was held on May 24th during the Particle Therapy Cooperative Group Congress (PTCOG55) in Prague, the Czech Republic. The feedback IBA received from all the participants demonstrates the importance of holding this as an annual event. During PTCOG, IBA also co-organized a site visit to the Proton Therapy Center Czech and hosted a Lunch Symposium.

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