Becomes only hospital in Sri Lanka to offer new tools for improved treatment planning and enhanced patient data safet

Ceylinco Healthcare Services Limited (CHSL) has announced the completion of a major upgrade to the Linear Accelerator at the Ceylinco Cancer Centre to offer patients the latest improvements available in this form of radiation therapy.

The upgrade of the treatment planning software as well as associated hardware components of the Varian Clinax iX Linear Accelerator provides new tools for medical physicists to achieve better and improved treatment planning in addition to an enhanced level of security in terms of patient data safety and cyber-attacks, the Company said.

With this upgrade, Ceylinco Cancer Center becomes the only hospital in Sri Lanka to use version 17.0.1 of the ‘Eclipse’ treatment planning software and the ‘Aria’ patient database management software with the Varian Clinax iX Linear Accelerator.

Alongside the software upgrade CHSL also invested in the replacement of all the server computers, the planning station computers, the operator workstation consoles, the Linear Accelerator’s Portal Vision and the treatment console with the latest hardware for the smooth functioning of the systems, the Company said.

“From inception, our mission has been to offer cancer patients in Sri Lanka access to the latest available radiation therapy at a cost that is significantly lower than the cost of treatment overseas,” CHSL Chairman Mr R. Renganathan said. “To continue to achieve this, investments in periodic upgrades are essential, even though the costs of such upgrades have escalated, especially due to the depreciation of the Rupee.”

A three-member team comprising of an application specialist, a hardware engineer and a software specialist from Varian Medical Systems visited the site and carried out the upgrades over three and a half days, and the staff of the Ceylinco Cancer Centre including the Medical Physicists and the Radiation Therapists underwent comprehensive training both online as well as on site after the upgrade.

The state-of-the-art Clinac® iX Linear Accelerator purchased by CHSL from Varian Medical Systems, a global leader in Radiation Oncology, was commissioned in December 2018, replacing the original Linear Accelerator unit which when commissioned in 2007, was the first unit of its kind in Sri Lanka. The Varian Clinac iX Linear Accelerator delivers significant improvements in precision and reduced treatment times, enabling the Ceylinco Cancer Centre to efficiently deliver wide-ranging radiation therapy treatments including 3D Conformal Radiotherapy and Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT). Known as the most stable machine for cancer treatment, the Linear Accelerator treats cancers of the breast, abdomen, lungs, and prostate.

A wholly-owned subsidiary of Sri Lanka’s leading life insurance company Ceylinco Life, CHSL also owns Sri Lanka’s only TomoTherapy Centre. TomoTherapy is an integrated, advanced form of 3-dimensional image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT). Because a patient’s anatomy can change from day-to-day, image-guided radiation therapy helps doctors make immediate adjustments to allow for tumour movement or shrinkage, weight loss and other changes.