Varian oncology software benchmarked by UK Health Service
10 July 2006
Crawley, UK. Varian Medical Systems’ medical oncology software for
integrated chemotherapy e-prescribing and pharmacy dispensing has performed
strongly against rival systems after being benchmarked against a national
specification by the UK’s National Health Service. The benchmarking
exercise was carried out by the e-prescribing team from NHS Connecting for
Health in conjunction with the National Cancer Action Team. The medical
oncology software systems of several suppliers were tested. “The Varian
MedOncology system demonstrated the second highest level of functionality
during the exercise but has now developed even further,” says Steve Laws,
Varian’s medical oncology sales manager. “We are delighted that although
being a recent entrant into a mature chemotherapy prescribing systems
market, our software is already considered as providing one of the best fits
for NHS requirements, particularly in the areas of safety and scalability.”
Due to the potential benefits of electronic chemotherapy prescribing, a
capital sum has been made available for UK health trusts to bid against.
Trusts can now put together business cases for software-based electronic
chemotherapy prescribing solutions at their oncology departments. The
business case must be submitted by September and capital funding will be
released in early October. Installations need to be underway by March 2007.
Varian’s VARiS MedOncology system is designed to improve patient care and
departmental efficiency by fully integrating the prescribing, preparation,
dispensing and administration of drugs. It significantly reduces the risk of
human error. “This system provides cancer treatment facilities with
software that combines and manages information including scheduling,
prescribing and clinical information for both radiation therapy and
chemotherapy within a single comprehensive electronic medical record for
each patient,” adds Steve Laws. “It is inherently designed to support
multi-site implementations and is therefore ideally suited for use across
complete cancer networks. The technology is well proven as well, as it
supports much larger installations than cancer networks such as complete
Canadian provinces. Regimen libraries, for example, can be shared across the
entire user community.” Varian’s medical oncology solution is already in
place in a number of UK hospitals including London (St Barts), Norwich,
Stoke, Carlisle, Redhill, Truro and Romford. Since the benchmarking exercise
was undertaken, Varian has announced a more advanced oncology information
system called ARIA, which contains many new features including a number
specifically targeted at the UK market. “ARIA represents a new generation
of Varian software systems that furthers Varian’s vision of enabling cancer
centres to build fully integrated solutions across all functions of the
centre,” said Walter Frei, head of Varian’s Oncology Systems business in
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