Virtualization Solution Improves Ease of Use and Interoperability

Novel virtualization technology enables clinical personnel to function from home, a department workstation, from laptops on the road, or from tablets at the patient bedside.

The ARIA Oncology Information System is a comprehensive software solution that combines an oncology-specific patient electronic medical record (EMR) with functional components for managing clinical, administrative, and financial operations in the oncology clinic. The new release of the system, ARIA 11, can now be deployed in a virtualized environment, installed on servers in a central location, and then accessed using a variety of remote devices. The advantages to this approach include greater flexibility, scalability, and productivity, as well as lower information technology (IT) costs.

Built upon a new user home screen that is tightly integrated with the proprietary Eclipse treatment planning software, clinics can also configure their system to guide department personnel through their daily tasks by automatically activating the next step in the process, thus streamlining clinical, financial, and administrative processes in cancer care. Clinics can also define checklists and attach them to any task as a quality assurance measure, and require that these be completed before a treatment can progress, making radiation and medical oncology departments more efficient and cost-effective. The ARIA 11 Oncology Information System is a product of Varian Medical Systems (Palo Alto, CA, USA).

“ARIA 11 has been designed so that doctors, nurses, radiation therapists, physicists, dosimetrists, and administrators can personalize their home screen to easily access what they need, when they need it, at the level of detail specific to their roles,” said Corey Zankowski, vice president of product management at Varian Systems.

The ARIA system is in use at nearly 3,000 treatment centers around the world, and has also been certified so that users can use it to demonstrate stage 1 “meaningful use” of an electronic medical record (EMR), in order to qualify for funding from the US federal government.

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Varian Medical Systems