Imagine: A world without the fear of cancer

Kolleen Kennedy, MS, was recently appointed president of Varian's Oncology

At Varian, that's the vision that galvanizes us, and we believe it's at the heart of your vision, too. Every day, millions of people summon the strength to confront cancer. Cancer treatment professionals the world over do what they can to help patients battle this challenging disease. At Varian, our job is to innovate, to simplify, and to provide support so that you can focus energy—literally and figuratively—on saving lives. Our goal is to unite with you in the common purpose of fighting cancer.

In my nearly 15 years at Varian, I have had the opportunity to be at the helm of our Product Management, Marketing, Engineering, and Customer Support Services organizations. My experiences in these roles, and my interactions with customers across the globe, have helped to shape my current leadership priorities. It all starts with putting patient care first.

As president of Varian's Oncology Systems business, key values that I emphasize as guiding principles include integrity, collaboration, quality, accountability, innovation, and making sure we are taking a global view by understanding the needs of the markets in which we operate, and not assuming that a one-size-fits-all solution will make clinical or economic sense in all settings. In the spirit of these values, we're focusing our attention in these areas:

At Varian, our job is to innovate, to simplify, and to provide support so that you can focus energy—literally and figuratively—on saving lives. Our goal is to unite with you in the common purpose of fighting cancer.

Customer intimacy. We are working to develop our cross-functional ability to deliver a complete and consistently attentive end-to-end customer experience. This means speaking with one voice and providing accessible, responsive touch points for customers to interact with our teams, from the product development engineers to the service people, from the sales organization to the education program managers.

Quality and safety. We recognize that radiotherapy has become a technologically sophisticated process that requires all stakeholders—manufacturers, regulators, and the clinical community—to play an important role. We're focused on doing our part to build safety elements into our products and training programs. Continuing in the direction we took with ARIA® version 11, we are designing tools that can be configured to support and automate important aspects of your quality program.

Innovation. Building on our long history of developing new tools that make it possible for clinicians to improve the quality of cancer treatment, we're working to make those tools simpler and easier to use, as well as more efficient. Areas of emphasis are: technologies that simplify SRS and SBRT planning and delivery, specific disease-site solutions, and systems that are customizable to meet different clinical needs and objectives.

Education. Varian's Global Education and Training team headquarters is in Las Vegas, Nevada, where the company operates the largest corporate radiotherapy training center in the world. Varian has also built a network of education centers, with sites in India, China, Japan, and Europe, to respond to the need for training locally and in multiple languages around the world. In 2012 we announced plans to build a center in Brazil. We have greatly expanded our sponsorship of continuing education programs, online webinars, and peer-to-peer training programs that connect experienced clinicians with those adopting new technology.

Research. Varian spent more than US$170 million on research and development in 2011. Each year we routinely commit significant revenues to support research initiatives, with more than 100 active research projects spanning five continents. Links with partners in academia and industry strengthen our position at the leading edge of science and technology by providing access to thought leaders, novel R&D tools, and data on emerging trends. This is the "how" of our mission—what we're doing to join with you to realize the vision of a world without fear of cancer. We want to help you save another 100,000 lives each year. I know that some of the goals articulated here are ambitious and require significant efforts on our part to deliver. I'd love to hear from you as to how we are doing and invite you to get in touch at this e-mail address: ca@varian.com. It's a pleasure and a privilege to support you. We're united in purpose to help you fight cancer.