AMSTERDAM – Royal Philips and the Netherlands Cancer Institute announced on Monday a new agreement that expands their long-term collaboration and enforces the mission of the cancer institute in offering the best possible care to cancer patients. The agreement will give the only comprehensive cancer center in the Netherlands access to the latest healthcare innovations to contribute to the institute's spearheads: personalized medicine and image guided precision treatment. The Netherlands Cancer Institute and Philips will be working closely together to realize a paradigm shift in the surgical treatment of cancer patients to improve treatment outcomes. They aim to advance from “standard” surgical procedures towards personalized precision surgery to enable improved first-time-right removal of all tumor tissue. To this end, the agreement includes an innovative hybrid suite, a combination of a sterile conventional operating room with a lab for image guided therapies. It offers an integrated and comprehensive solution in which a wide range of procedures can be performed from conventional surgery to new live 3D image guided therapies. The Netherlands Cancer Institute also joins a group of early adopters with the commercial installation of the new Philips Vereos — the world's first and only digital PET/CT system — that through its digital detector technology offers high image resolution at low radiation dose. It will support the Netherlands Cancer Institute enhancing cancer diagnosis and staging and advancing personalized medicine in oncology. The new agreement expands the existing research collaboration between the organizations, which has been in place since 2011. Besides the development of image-guided surgery, the partners are also working together to optimize radiotherapy planning. The Netherlands Cancer Institute is also a member of a research consortium led by Elekta and supported by Philips as the MRI technology partner. The consortium is developing the world's first high-field MR-guided radiation therapy system to allow doctors to adapt radiation therapy during the procedure. This could improve treatment accuracy, potentially reducing side effects and enabling increases in the therapeutic dose. “As a Comprehensive Cancer Center combining state-of-the-art research and hospital facilities, we are committed to contributing to innovations that change clinical practice in patient care and to continuously improving our efficiency and patient centeredness. The new equipment will be used for diagnosing and staging cancer in the initial stages as well as for cutting-edge image-guided treatment and therapy monitoring. — SG
