Varian Medical Systems Receives FDA 510(k) Clearance for RapidPlan™ Knowledge-Based Treatment Planning Software for Radiation Oncology

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 21, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR) today announced that it has received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a radiotherapy treatment planning tool designed to enhance quality, consistency, and efficiency in radiotherapy treatment planning.   

Showcased for the first time at the annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) in Atlanta last month, RapidPlan opens the door to enhanced treatment planning by providing clinics with knowledge-based models that generate high-quality personalized treatment plans for their patients. 

"RapidPlan streamlines the planning process by enabling users to tap into knowledge derived from historical treatment plans," says Corey Zankowski, vice president of product management. "It considers the unique characteristics of the current patient and helps to generate a new treatment plan that approaches the optimal in terms of achieving the radiation oncologist's tumor coverage and normal tissue sparing goals."

"Without this tool, treatment planning is an iterative process requiring several rounds of trial-and-error revisions," says Chris Toth, vice president of marketing.  "RapidPlan is designed to help users produce a near-ideal plan the first time, reducing or even eliminating the need for multiple time consuming iterations." 

RapidPlan is also a "learning system," Zankowski says.  "A group of clinicians can take their best treatment plans and add them to the system for use in creating new, improved practice models for the future.  The models can be shared among colleagues within a care network to create a practice standard."

"As a physician, I'm particularly excited about how we can 'train' the RapidPlan tool by using information from our best plans as a starting point when planning for new patients," says Dee Khuntia, Varian's vice president for medical affairs.  "The system will also enable benchmarking by allowing us to compare our treatment plans to models created by communities of experts from around the globe.  RapidPlan was designed to allow for creation of high quality, world class treatment plans anywhere.  Additionally, this can be done in a fraction of the time required for standard treatment planning, which is particularly important as we continue to become more efficient in our practices."

RapidPlan was cleared by the FDA for distribution in U.S., and is not yet available in other parts of the world.

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, 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, digital detectors, and image processing workstations for X-ray imaging in medical, scientific, and industrial applications and also supplies high-energy X-ray devices for cargo screening and non-destructive testing applications.  Varian Medical Systems employs approximately 6350 people who are located at manufacturing sites in North America, Europe, and China and approximately 70 sales and support offices around the world. For more information, visit http://www.varian.com or follow us on Twitter.

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT:
Varian Medical Systems, United States
Meryl Ginsberg, 650.424.6444
[email protected]

SOURCE Varian Medical Systems

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