Early experiences of establishing telemedicine in the radiotherapy physics department at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak: When less staff is more effective

Abstract

Background: It is a unique challenge to provide radiation oncology care to cancer patients at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak without increasing the risk of staff and patients’ infection. In this paper, the impact of the remote access implementation strategy on the number of patients admitted for treatment and the physical presence time of the physicists in the department of medical physics of a radiotherapy center at the time of COVID-19 outbreak were evaluated. Method: Remote PCTm software has been applied for physicists and oncologists to have access from their homes or offices to computer and medical systems of the center, such as a treatment planning system (TPS) and Record and Verify (R&V) system. Most of the tasks in the medical physics department, such as image registration, contouring, plan optimization, plan evaluation, and plan verification were performed via remote access. Results: One-month studies after the implementation of this strategy showed that there was no notable change in the number of patients treated per month (less than 4 decrease compared to the average number of patients treated per month in the last year). The strategy significantly reduced the time required for the physical presence of medical physicists in the department (75). Conclusions: The use of teleworking can reduce the physical presence and unnecessary involvement in the radiotherapy department. This may ultimately decrease the risk of contamination of staff and indirectly the risk of contamination of patients. © 2020 The Authors