Designed to expand the availability of high quality cancer care globally and help save the lives of millions more cancer patients, treatments with Varian’s Halcyon system have started at three different cancer centers in northern and southern Africa. Halcyon simplifies and enhances virtually every aspect of image-guided volumetric intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), including improved patient comfort and shortening the time from installation to first treatment without sacrificing quality.
The cancer centers now offering Halcyon treatments in Africa are Clinique le Littoral Casablanca and Centre d’Oncologie Nakhil Rabat in Morocco, and Busamed Oncology Center- Hillcrest in South Africa.
- Clinique le Littoral Casablanca, Morocco was the first Halcyon installation in Africa and was selected over other available solutions to help address the cancer center’s growing patient volume, and as a complement to their existing capabilities.
- Centre d’Oncologie Nakhil Rabat, Morocco was able to have the system installed, commissioned, staff trained and begin treating patients in just two weeks. Since beginning Halcyon treatments in January 2018, the center is already providing care to over 70 patients per day on this system as part of their expanding state-of-the-art techniques including IGRT, RapidArc and SBRT using other Varian equipment exclusively.
- Busamed Oncology Center- Hillcrest, South Africa was the first Halcyon installation in Sub-Sahara Africa. This project is a symbol of a successful collaboration between the oncology center, Varian and partners for responding to the oncology need in the province. The fast installation process, ease of customer training, useful QA tools, and seamless workflows allowed the center to quickly begin offering treatments with the new system.
With the innovations in Halcyon, the system delivers high quality treatments, which empowers clinicians to care for more patients. Halcyon features a streamlined workflow that only requires nine steps from the start to the end of treatment compared to up to more than 30 steps with older technologies.
To assist in the reduction of time and construction costs from installation to first patient treatment, Halcyon offers expedited commissioning, requires less shielding than traditional systems, can fit in the majority of existing small vaults and can be installed in two weeks or less. Several cancer centers have already begun treating patients with Halcyon including Radiation Oncology Centres (Australia), University Hospitals Leuven (Belgium), Queen’s Hospital (England), and Penn Medicine (U.S.).
“We are proud of our collaboration with these centers in Africa and increasing the access to high quality cancer treatments with Halcyon,” said Jean-LucDevleeschauwer, president, Varian Oncology Systems EMEIA. “We look forward to working with more centers across the region, and around the world, in the global fight against cancer.”
