GE HealthCare and Mayo Clinic last week announced a strategic initiative to personalize radiation therapy. The partnership, called GEMINI-RT, aims to improve cancer care by integrating imaging, artificial intelligence and patient monitoring.
Ben Newton, GE HealthCare's global head of oncology, said that personalized radiation therapy marks a shift from a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Traditionally, radiation therapy uses standardized protocols that might not fully account for variability in individual patients, Newton wrote in an email to MedTech Dive.
The collaboration will build on a radiology research agreement that GE HealthCare and Mayo Clinic struck in 2023. The current term is for five years, Newton wrote. Any research and related activities will take place at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Rochester, Minnesota.
The companies are exploring concepts that span a person’s cancer care journey. At the beginning, treatment planning would incorporate a patient’s full clinical history and medical record, according to Newton. By pulling information from thousands of similar cases, data can be used to optimize the radiation dose for the best outcome for an individual.
During and after treatment, connected care tools that track heart rhythm and other metrics can be used to detect early signs of potential side effects, such as cardiotoxicity, allowing clinicians to intervene sooner.
“The benefits of this approach could provide the means to target tumors, reduce risk to healthy tissue, and improve long-term outcomes more accurately,” Newton wrote.
The partnership includes approaches that would combine radiation with emerging treatments, such as targeted drugs and precision heating.
In the early stages of the partnership, GE HealthCare and Mayo Clinic will explore options including clinical trials, retrospective trials and evaluation of new solutions, Newton wrote.
If the companies run clinical trials, eligible patients will be able to choose to opt in. In the long term, Newton added, innovations explored through the partnership may be integrated into GE HealthCare’s product portfolio and clinical practices to be accessible to patients around the world.
