Developing and sustaining a secure application for transfer of previous radiation therapy treatment details

Abstract

Data availability remains a major challenge for radiation therapy dose accumulation for patients’ re-treatment and re-irradiation. When a patient moves between radiation therapy providers it is particularly challenging. To address this challenge, a solution was developed for departments in Victoria, Australia, with the ability to request and receive files of any size and type from other providers, supported by a workflow system, an independent security model and a highly secure platform. In the first 5 years there have been 3911 requests for previous treatment details. Of these 2937 (75 %) involved transfer of DICOM data to enable higher quality dose accumulation assessment.