Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 9.3:
Execution time of one treatment plan verification versus the number of available CPUs
• It decreases the market entry cost. The service provider does not need its own
computing farm. In fact, only two front-end servers (for redundancy) are needed
to start the provision. The computing power can be leased from Grid providers
on demand. Even in the case of having its own infrastructure, the Grid applica-
tion provider can adapt to peaks in the demand renting CPU capacity or sharing
resources of other providers. Also, those hospitals which install the solution in
their premises can adapt to their internal demand, renting CPU capacity to other
Grid providers.
• It increases the trustworthiness of the platform. In the health sector, the security
of the personal medical information is a must. Any external health service must
include secure measures which guarantee the confidentiality of patient's data.
Grid includes them from scratch and can be extended with new ones, as in the
case of BEinEIMRT experiment.
Of course, Grid is not the unique solution for these requirements. For example,
the emerging Cloud paradigm seems to adapt well to it, as it is discussed later.
Additionally, the usage of the platform inside the hospitals' daily work adds other
benefits. First of all, it helps to improve the quality and effectiveness of the cancer
treatments. The hospitals are continuously looking for new techniques for doing
this at an affordable cost. E-IMRT provides new tools that allow the hospitals to
verify treatment plans virtually, avoiding costly experimental verifications. Also, it
includes one tool which helps them to look for a valid treatment in very complex
cases, a task that must currently be done manually. Finally, because the platform
works for the medical physicists off-line, they can do other duties in the hospital,
increasing their productivity. So, it contributes to palliate the scarcity of these
specialized technicians in the market.
The managers of the hospitals have another advantage: the cost model. E-IMRT
services can be provisioned following a pay-per-use model. This means that the
costs of using the services can be directly assigned to the treatment. The hospital
only pays when the service is needed for the treatment definition and delivery.
