Auditing Radiation Therapy Facilities: Ensuring Compliance with National Standards

The field of radiation therapy plays a crucial role in modern healthcare, ensuring precision in cancer treatment while maintaining the highest safety standards. Regulatory compliance, quality assurance, and technological integration are vital components of this industry, directly impacting patient outcomes and operational efficiency. Hospitals and healthcare facilities must navigate stringent guidelines set by regulatory authorities, ensuring adherence to protocols that minimize risks and optimize treatment accuracy. With advancements in radiation therapy, the industry continues to evolve, emphasizing automation, digital compliance tracking, and personalized treatment plans.

Priya Jacob has contributed to these advancements through her work in compliance and operational efficiency in radiation therapy. She has been involved in compliance initiatives ensuring adherence to Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) guidelines, which resulted in successful audits with no non-conformance reports. Her work on workflow enhancements in quality assurance, reduced treatment planning turnaround time by 20%, improving the timeliness of patient care. By refining dosimetry procedures, she helped minimize material wastage and reduce operational costs associated with quality assurance equipment. Additionally, the quality control measures contributed to improving treatment accuracy by 10%.

Beyond compliance, her efforts have played a role in increasing operational efficiency. The facility where she worked was able to treat 30% more patients annually without compromising safety standards. This was partly due to the integration of critical systems such as Eclipse 13.6, Aria 13.6, and Brainlab iPlan RT, which reduced data transfer errors by 40%. She also developed training programs for radiotherapy staff on compliance and standard operating procedures. “Internal audits initiated under my supervision contributed to maintaining operational continuity and readiness for external inspections”, she says.

Developing site-specific quality assurance protocols for advanced radiotherapy machines, including Varian Trilogy, Novalis Tx, and Tomotherapy HiArt and aligning them with national standards was a major task. She worked on compliance documentation processes that improved report submissions and license renewals with AERB. Her experience in dosimetry audits using devices like IBA Blue Phantom II, Sun Nuclear ArcCHECK, and Gafchromic film analysis has been applied to efforts to improve treatment accuracy. Additionally, she completed over 500 annual treatment verifications in line with national standards.

Working with a range of equipment, including Varian Clinac, Trilogy, Novalis Tx, Bhabhatron II, and Nucletron HDR Brachytherapy, requires extensive calibration and documentation. The changing regulatory landscape also posed challenges, which she addressed by implementing a compliance-tracking system that allowed quick updates and minimized discrepancies.

Jacob has also worked on educational initiatives, developing hospital-wide training materials on compliance best practices for radiation safety professionals and technologists. The research includes "Hybrid IMRT for BCT: A Quantitative and Comparative Study with Other RT Treatment Techniques." She also presented a poster at the Breast Oncology 2014 International Conference on Multidisciplinary Management of Breast Cancer in Kochi, Kerala.

In conclusion, automated quality control systems could enable early detection of deviations, improving treatment accuracy. Centralized digital monitoring systems may also enhance consistency in adherence to treatment standards across multiple facilities. Additionally, individualized quality assurance tailored to specific cases could provide more precision and safety. Priya Jacob’s work highlights ongoing efforts to improve compliance and operational efficiency in radiation therapy, contributing to advancements in patient care and safety.