http://www.tomotherapy.com () —
TomoTherapy Incorporated (http://www.tomotherapy.com/) (NASDAQ: TOMO),
maker of advanced, integrated radiation therapy solutions for cancer
care, today announced that its technology will soon be used to treat
cancer patients in Nottingham, England. The Nottingham Radiotherapy
Centre will install the TomoTherapy@ Hi-Art@ treatment system in
November as part of a service expansion and relocation.
The TomoTherapy treatment system enables delivery of state-of-the-art
CT image-guided intensity modulated radiotherapy (IG-IMRT), enabling
the hospital to reinforce its leadership in high-quality, efficient
cancer care for the people of the East Midlands of England.
The Nottingham Radiotherapy Centre serves a population of
approximately 1 million and delivers 37,000 fractions of radiation
therapy annually. The Centre provides complex external beam treatment
including paediatric radiation therapy, intensity-modulated radiation
therapy (IMRT), continuous hyperfractionation, and total body electron
and photon radiation therapy. The centre is part of Nottingham
University Hospitals National Health Service (NHS) Trust, which is one
of the country's largest teaching hospitals.
Russell Hart, Radiotherapy Service Manager of the Centre, states:
"Our multi-disciplinary team is thrilled to be introducing TomoTherapy
technology. Benefits will include better access for our patients to
what we believe is the best delivery system for complex image-guided,
intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IG-IMRT). The new machine will
also mean that there will be some patients for whom curative treatment
will now be possible whereas in the past treatment would only have
been offered on a palliative basis. A clear advantage of the
TomoTherapy system is the rapid installation time. This will enable us
to have the high technology available in a short space of time -- much
quicker than a conventional linear accelerator.
Here at Nottingham, in line with national policy, we believe that
four-dimensional (4D) Adaptive Radiotherapy is the future standard of
care for radiotherapy treatment, and that the TomoTherapy Hi-Art
system is the most sophisticated and best system to achieve this
objective. We believe our equipment strategy will provide us with a
full range of treatment options for the population we serve, with the
TomoTherapy system best able to deliver the most complex dose
distributions."
Commenting on the key role TomoTherapy technology is playing in a
publicly funded health service, Julie Mead, Director and Clinical
Advisor from Oncology Systems Limited, states:
"The oncology team at Nottingham put all equipment vendors through a
rigorous clinical and technical public tender evaluation. They clearly
concluded that the TomoTherapy platform would bring significant
benefits to a centre that is reported as having one of the busiest
patient throughput figures per treatment machine, in all of the UK.
Already having a linac IMRT programme in place, the Nottingham
Radiotherapy Centre also saw the improvement in treatment quality that
TomoTherapy technology would bring, along with centre-wide efficiency
gains from allocating advanced treatments to the unit. In difficult
financial times, the TomoTherapy platform offers not only the best
quality radiotherapy, but also the highest efficiency for advanced
IG-IMRT. The NHS looks at cost-effectiveness as a key criterion. The
TomoTherapy platform fits the bill."
Reinforcing the efficiency requirements so critical to the publicly
funded NHS, Nottingham's Russell Hart adds:
"We treat between 35 to 50 patients per normal working day on our
linear accelerators, depending on the complexity of the work being
undertaken. We aim to maintain that throughput and utilise TomoTherapy
technology to its maximum, by treating up to 35 patients per day.
Other NHS TomoTherapy customer sites have demonstrated that this is
possible in the UK, but of course this will be a tremendous
achievement in Nottingham as we clearly expect that the treatments
delivered on the TomoTherapy unit will have far higher quality and
complexity than what is feasible on the linear accelerator it is
replacing."
TomoTherapy technology is developed and manufactured by TomoTherapy
Inc., and is supplied in the UK by Oncology Systems Limited
(http://www.osl.uk.com/) , based in Shrewsbury, England.
About Nottingham University HospitalNottingham City University
Hospital NHS Trust (NUH) is one of England's busiest and largest acute
teaching trusts. It provides acute and specialist services to 2.5
million people within Nottingham and surrounding communities from the
Queen's Medical Centre and the City Hospital campuses. The hospital's
annual budget is in excess of >682 million of public sector funding,
housing over 1,700 hospital beds and employing over 13,000 staff.
Nottingham is the only city in the country to secure three successful
bids for prestigious biomedical research units. NUH is working with
The University of Nottingham to help to translate research findings
for stomach, bowel and liver disease, hearing and respiratory disease
into better patient care.
About Oncology Systems Limited Oncology Systems Limited (OSL) is a
privately owned limited company based in Shrewsbury, England. OSL is
an exclusive supplier of radiation therapy technology to the UK and
Ireland. It distributes TomoTherapy@ cancer treatment technology to
the UK's NHS and private radiotherapy facilities, and to both public
and private providers in the Republic of Ireland.
About TomoTherapy Incorporated TomoTherapy Incorporated develops,
markets and sells advanced radiation therapy solutions that can be
used to treat a wide variety of cancers, from the most common to the
most complex. The ring gantry-based TomoTherapy@ platform combines
integrated CT imaging with conformal radiation therapy to deliver
sophisticated radiation treatments with speed and precision while
reducing radiation exposure to surrounding healthy tissue.
TomoTherapy's suite of solutions include its flagship Hi-Art@
treatment system, which has been used to deliver more than three
million CT-guided, helical intensity-modulated radiation therapy
(IMRT) treatment fractions; the TomoHD treatment system, designed to
enable cancer centers to treat a broader patient population with a
single device; and the TomoMobile relocatable radiation therapy
solution, designed to improve access and availability of
state-of-the-art cancer care. TomoTherapy's stock is traded on the
NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol TOMO. To learn more about
TomoTherapy, please visit TomoTherapy.com.
5/82010 TomoTherapy Incorporated. All rights reserved. TomoTherapy,
Tomo, TomoDirect, TQA, the TomoTherapy logo and Hi-Art are among
trademarks, service marks or registered trademarks of TomoTherapy
Incorporated in the United States and other countries.