Leading German Healthcare Group Selects Equipment and Software from Varian Medical Systems for Major Replacement Project | Varian

{ "pageType": "news-article", "title": "Leading German Healthcare Group Selects Equipment and Software from Varian Medical Systems for Major Replacement Project", "articleDate": "March 10, 2009", "introText": "", "category": "Oncology" }

Leading German Healthcare Group Selects Equipment and Software from Varian Medical Systems for Major Replacement Project

RapidArc™ Radiotherapy Technology among New Capabilities Offered to Cancer Patients in HELIOS Hospitals

BERLIN, March 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cancer patients throughout Germany will gain access to the most modern radiotherapy treatments with the announcement by the HELIOS Kliniken Group that it is acquiring nine linear accelerators from Varian Medical Systems , the majority of them equipped with RapidArc™ technology for fast and comfortable treatments.

Berlin-based HELIOS, one of the three largest private clinic groups in Germany, offers radiotherapy at six hospitals in Krefeld, Wuppertal, Schwerin, Bad Saarow, Berlin-Zehlendorf and Berlin-Buch. The new machines will be installed at each of these sites, replacing older models and adding capacity that will give more patients access to the most advanced cancer care. Each site will also receive a suite of Varian's ARIA™ oncology information management software and Eclipse™ treatment planning software. Three of the hospitals will also receive a new GammaMed™ brachytherapy afterloader. The total value of the order, placed in February, is $17 million.

"The new equipment will enable HELIOS to offer dynamic adaptive, high-precision radiotherapy for all patients and they have identified RapidArc as a major additional capability," says Michael Sandhu, head of Varian's Oncology Systems business in Europe. "Healthcare providers such as HELIOS have continued to invest strongly in radiotherapy equipment and software which enables them to offer patients modern and comfortable treatments. We are honored to be working with Helios on this major project."

For the first time, RapidArc treatments will be offered by HELIOS hospitals enabling image-guided intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) to be delivered up to eight times faster than is possible with conventional IMRT. RapidArc delivers a precise and efficient treatment in single or multiple arcs of the treatment machine around the patient, as the accelerator continuously rotates around the patient, varying the beam continuously. Conventional IMRT treatments are slower and more difficult for radiotherapy radiographers because they target tumors using a complex sequence of fixed beams from multiple angles.

The new equipment will be installed in stages over the next two years. HELIOS, a business segment of the global health care company Fresenius, owns 62 hospitals across Germany. In 2008, 63,000 cancer patients were treated in HELIOS hospitals.

Editorial contact: Neil Madle, Varian Medical Systems, +44 7786 526068

About Varian Medical Systems

Varian Medical Systems, Inc., of Palo Alto, California, is the world's leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating cancer and other medical conditions with radiotherapy, radiosurgery, proton therapy, and brachytherapy. The company supplies informatics software for managing comprehensive cancer clinics, radiotherapy centers and medical oncology practices. Varian is a premier supplier of tubes and digital detectors for X-ray imaging in medical, scientific, and industrial applications and also supplies X-ray imaging products for cargo screening and industrial inspection. Varian Medical Systems employs approximately 5,100 people who are located at manufacturing sites in North America and Europe and in its 60 sales and support offices around the world. For more information, visit http://www.varian.com/.

SOURCE: Varian Medical Systems, Inc.

Web site: http://www.varian.com/