by
Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | September 15, 2015
Photo courtesy of Hitachi
Hitachi has just announced FDA approval of the PROBEAT-V installed at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The system, which utilizes Hitachi's Discrete Spot Scanning technology, was 12 years in the making and cost roughly $190 million.
"We needed to know what the state of the art in 2015 was going to be in 2008, 2009, so we selected the pencil beam as the future and it was the right decision and we're really excited about opening the doors very soon here," Dr. Michael Herman, chair of the Division of Medical Physics,
told KTTC News in May.
Treatments have been underway on the new proton therapy system since June and the first patient finished treatment in August. The 190 degree half gantries provide efficient yet spacious treatment room environments, according to Hitachi.
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Two of the four treatment rooms are in operation while a third room will open in December and the fourth next spring.
It will take five to six years for the clinic to ramp up to full capacity, at which point it will treat 138 patients each day, Mayo's Radiation Oncology chair Robert Foote
told MPR News.
Foote said the program will ultimately employ about 140 new staff members, including physicians, physicists, radiation therapists and nurses.
Installation and commissioning activities are already underway for another Hitachi proton therapy system at a second Mayo facility in Phoenix, Arizona, with treatments scheduled to start in the spring of 2016.
Both facilities are credited, in part, to a $100 million gift. Since there are no investors to pay back, Mayo Clinic is planning to charge the same rates for proton therapy as they do for intensity modulated radiation therapy.
“We’re basically telling the insurance companies and our critics — we’re not in this for the money. We think this is the best thing for our patients,” Sameer Keole, medical director of proton-beam therapy at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix,
told the Wall Street Journal.
Hitachi also manufactured the proton system used at the MD Anderson Proton Therapy Center since 2006.
