Techna and UHN’s Technology Development and Commercialization office are pleased to announce that UHN has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with iRT, a German start-up company, for an innovative technology developed at UHN to improve patient safety in radiotherapy. The company will initially focus exclusively on the Integral Quality Monitoring (IQM) technology, which provides an automated “final check” of radiation therapy beams. As part of the licensing deal, iRT has arranged to work with the scientific team at UHN’s Techna Institute to continue to co-develop IQM. The company will work with UHN to refine the prototype into a commercial device.
Invented by Drs. Mohammad Islam, Robert Heaton and Techna Director David Jaffray, IQM can improve patient safety for external beam radiation therapy. To ensure that the correct dose is safely and precisely given to a tumour, radiation oncology clinics must perform regular quality assurance measurements, time-consuming tasks. IQM can reduce the patient-specific quality assurance burden, increasing the time the treatment machines can be used to treat patients. Monitoring the beam intensity and shape in real-time, IQM can detect deviations from the planned radiation dose and interrupt treatment, preventing treatment incidents. Techna and iRT will work together to see that this efficient safety innovation becomes integrated into radiotherapy devices around the world.