Danish Center for Particle Therapy, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.
Department of Radiology, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.
Semin Nucl Med. 2022 Jan;52(1):79-85. doi: 10.1053/j.semnuclmed.2021.06.002. Epub 2021 Jun 16.
Like all other medical specialties, radiotherapy has been deeply influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has had severe influence on the entire patient trajectory in oncology, from diagnosis to treatment and follow-up. Many examples of how to deal with patient and staff safety, shortness of staff and other resources and the quest to continue high-quality, evidence-based treatment have been presented. The use of telemedicine and telehealth is frequently presented as a part of the solution to overcome these challenges. Some of the available presented solutions will only apply in an acute, local setting, whereas others might inspire the community to improve quality and cost-effectiveness of radiotherapy as well as knowledge sharing in the future. Some of the unresolved issues in many of the available technical solutions are related to data security and public regulation, for example, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the EU and HIPAA compliance (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the USA. Using a solution that involves a supplier's server in a non-EU country is problematic within the EU. In this paper we shortly review the influence of COVID-19 on radiotherapy. We describe some of the possible solutions for telehealth in target delineation - a crucial part of high-quality radiotherapy, which often requires multidisciplinary effort, hands-on corporation, and high-quality multimodal imaging. Hereafter, our own technical solution will be presented as a case.
与所有其他医学专业一样，放射治疗深受 COVID-19 大流行的影响。大流行对肿瘤学的整个患者轨迹，从诊断到治疗和随访，都产生了严重影响。已经提出了许多关于如何处理患者和员工安全、员工和其他资源短缺以及寻求继续进行高质量、基于证据的治疗的例子。远程医疗和远程医疗的使用经常被作为克服这些挑战的解决方案的一部分。一些现有的解决方案仅适用于急性、局部环境，而另一些解决方案可能会激发社区提高放射治疗的质量和成本效益，并在未来共享知识。许多现有技术解决方案中尚未解决的一些问题与数据安全和公共法规有关，例如欧盟的 GDPR（通用数据保护条例）和美国的 HIPAA 合规性（医疗保险携带和责任法案）。在欧盟内部，使用涉及非欧盟国家供应商服务器的解决方案是有问题的。在本文中，我们简要回顾了 COVID-19 对放射治疗的影响。我们描述了一些在靶区勾画中使用远程医疗的可能解决方案，这是高质量放射治疗的关键部分，通常需要多学科的努力、实际合作和高质量的多模态成像。此后，我们将介绍自己的技术解决方案作为一个案例。
