Paperless workflows for radiotherapy patients go live!

After 2 years of development alongside Varian's Clinical Implementation team, Radiotherapy at Velindre has begun the transition to completely paperless processes.

All new Radiotherapy Requests will be via Varian's Oncology Management System, Aria. These patients will follow a completely paperless workflow.  Radiotherapy Requests previously created using the WCP IRMER will continue to the end of their treatment using paper-based workflows.  This will help deliver improved quality, safety and a more patient-centred experience. This is a key achievement that will act as the glue to realise the full patient benefits of the integrated radiotherapy solution. The first completely paperless patient was treated on Wednesday this week.

The team has focused on ensuring safe working practices and eliminating historic workarounds due to the use of legacy systems, such as CANISC.  After an initial period of implementation, when staff are more confident and familiar with the system, we will collect and review feedback on the Aria workflows with the aim of improving efficiency and bringing in new functionality alongside new Aria upgrades.

The team will also be introducing systems to improve access to Aria (Varian Mobile), analyse radiotherapy workflows and data (Varian InSightive) and provide information to patients through a digital application (Varian Noona)

Philip Parsons, IRS Computing Lead, would like to express his thanks to all the team for their hard work and commitment over the go-live period, especially through all the long days. He also thanks all staff for their patience and willingness to feedback to the team.

Emmett, Clinical Implementation Specialist for Varian worked closely with the team during Go Live Week and congratulated the team on their successes:

“Firstly, I want to congratulate you all on your departmental Workflow Go-Live this week! Secondly, I’d also like to take a second to recognise the work done by the clinical core team, Gavyn, Helen, Hannah, Lucy, Phil, Dot, Clare & Tom!

Thank you for your efforts over the last few months, and for working long weekends in the run up to go-live! The team have tackled every obstacle and workflow challenge with a positive attitude and that’s evident in the results of this go-live.

The whole week has been so well-organised and efficient, and it was impressive to see how calm and collected everyone stayed throughout, I’m very grateful for the dedication, teamwork, and effort you’ve all put into this project so far, and for what I’m sure you will put in over the next phases in the coming months/years.”