Enhancing cyberattack resiliency through the radiotherapy backup and recovery dashboard tool

Area of Science:

• Medical Physics
• Radiation Oncology
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Cyberattacks pose significant risks to Radiation Oncology departments, disrupting access to critical patient data and treatment systems.
• Inability to access Record and Verify (R&V) systems and data backups hinders timely resumption of patient radiotherapy treatments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel software tool designed to back up radiotherapy treatment data and provide an accessible dashboard for critical patient information.
• To describe the implementation, challenges, and share open-source code for a tool enhancing cyberattack resiliency in radiation oncology clinics.

Main Methods:

• The Radiotherapy Backup and Recovery Dashboard Tool (RBRDT) backs up treatment information and DICOM-RT objects from R&V and Treatment Planning Systems (TPS) to an RT-PACS.
• In case of R&V system inaccessibility, RBRDT utilizes backed-up data from RT-PACS to generate a dashboard with essential treatment details for ongoing radiotherapy patients.

Main Results:

• The RBRDT has been successfully implemented in a clinical setting, performing backups every 10 minutes.
• Over 80,000 RTRECORDS, 322 RTPLANS, and 142 RTSTRUCTS have been backed up to the RT-PACS since May 2024.
• The dashboard is generated nightly, providing readily accessible patient treatment information.

Conclusions:

• The RBRDT addresses a crucial need for robust radiotherapy treatment data backup and restoration solutions.
• By transferring relational data to an accessible RT-PACS, the tool reduces dependency on the R&V system during cyberattacks.
• The RBRDT facilitates rapid resumption of patient treatments by consolidating and presenting critical data through an intuitive dashboard.