14 INNOVATION AT RAYSEARCH
COLLABORATION IS KEY FOR RESEARCH IMPACT Internal and external collaborations are the lifeblood of the applied research program at RaySearch, underpinning sustained product innovation that will ultimately benefit clinical customers and enhance patient outcomes. For Kjell Eriksson, the company’s Chief science officer, the task is to provide oversight and guidance for those diverse research efforts while ensuring alignment versus RaySearch’s long-term commercial and technology strategy.
Front and center among those broader priorities is RaySearch’s vision for comprehensive cancer care – a vision that will manifest through convergence of RayStation ®* and RayCare ®* towards a unified system for planning, optimizing and managing patient care across a range of treatment modalities. The first step down this road, moving beyond RaySearch’s traditional core base in radiation oncology, came at the end of 2019 with the release of a dedicated RayStation module for chemotherapy planning. Now, Eriksson and his team are laying the foundations for further diversification with a suite of RayStation tools to support surgeons with the planning of operations for tumor removal. “Ultimately the goal is co-planning of radiotherapy, medical oncology and surgery within the same software platform,” he explains. CUTTING EDGE A prototype surgery module is already in the works to inform planning and decision-making relating to partial liver resection. “The clinician will be able to visualize the tumor in relation to other substructures and blood vessels in the * Subject to regulatory clearance in some markets.
liver – identifying where to cut and what the remaining liver volume will look like after the tumor is removed,” says Eriksson. That research effort will intensify this summer, with clinical partners helping to evaluate the surgery prototype and further develop its functionality. “The bigger picture is compelling,” Eriksson adds, “with many other organs and disease indications likely to follow after clinical validation of this initial use case in the liver.” Another headline theme for Eriksson and colleagues is automation of the radiation oncology workflow – including segmentation, treatment planning, as well as clinical decision support for individualized patient treatments. A case study in this regard is RaySearch’s high-profile clinical partnership with MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, where one of several joint projects under way is seeking to develop and validate an automated dose-tracking capability across all of a patient’s treatment fractions. The aim: to harness meaningful clinical results and data-driven insights that will form the basis of adaptive radiation therapy. “We’re working together to build a framework for data anal-
