Radiation therapy plan checks in a paperless clinic

Area of Science:

• Medical Physics
• Radiation Oncology
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Traditional radiation therapy quality assurance (QA) relies on manual, paper-based checks of treatment parameters.
• This manual process is time-consuming, prone to human error, and inefficient in modern healthcare settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the development and implementation of an electronic QA system (EQS) for radiation therapy planning.
• To automate the verification of treatment planning data against record and verify (R&V) systems.
• To enhance data integrity, logical consistency, and calculation accuracy in radiation therapy QA.

Main Methods:

• Development of in-house software and standardized workflows for electronic QA.
• Directly reading treatment planning data and comparing it with R&V system databases.
• Implementing checks for data integrity, logical consistency, and calculation accuracy.

Main Results:

• The EQS successfully automates the QA process, moving beyond paper-based methods.
• The system covers a wide range of radiation therapy techniques including 3D conformal, IMRT, electrons, SRS, and TBI.
• Identified improvements in error detection compared to previous paperless systems.

Conclusions:

• The electronic QA system (EQS) offers a robust solution for automating radiation therapy plan checks.
• Workflow development is crucial for seamless integration and comprehensive QA coverage.
• The EQS addresses potential challenges and provides workarounds for electronic data accessibility issues.