Tobias Gass, Tomasz Morgas and Christopher Boylan from Varian Medical Systems Imaging Laboratory, a Siemens Healthineers company, have been named as the Siemens “Inventors of the Year 2021”. They were awarded in the category of Outstanding Invention for their ETHOS therapy. ETHOS facilitates adaptive radiation therapy within the standard time slot of care.
“ETHOS therapy democratizes advanced cancer care through efficient workflows that are enabled and supported by automation”, explains Tobias Gass, Manager Treatment Session Adaption, in a report from Siemens. He and Morgas are part of the Swiss Varian team, SHS Adaptive Solutions, which is based in Dättwil on the outskirts of Baden in the canton of Aargau. Boylan is part of the Varian subsidiary in Finland. While the colleagues in Baden focused on the patient modeling workflow, Boylan and his team in the Finnish capital of Helsinki worked on the software for adapting the treatment plan inside ETHOS.
An adaptive treatment plan takes into account the daily changes in the anatomy of the tumor patient and adjusts the dose distribution of the radiation therapy while they are on the couch inside the machine. “This potentially enables reduction of treatment toxicity and better tumor control”, explains product manager Tomasz Morgas.
According to Siemens, the “game-changing improvements” offered by ETHOS are down to its accuracy, speed and intuitive access to the technology. “We see first adoptions in community centers where adaptive radiation therapy was previously completely unavailable”, Morgas explains, before adding: “And we also see the type of delegation of authority that we wanted to make possible: from doctors to technicians. It saves the doctors time for tasks that need their expertise”.
