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Remote planning Services

What is Mercurius Connect ® and how does it impact radiation therapy? 

Mercurius Connect is a proprietary digital platform used by the Mercurius Health team and our customers for secure and efficient remote treatment planning.

It is a point-to-point connection between Mercurius Health and the customer, allowing remote access to a treatment planning system.  Through the embedded scheduling and communication system planning, requests are matched with the most appropriate planner based on their experience and skill set to minimize plan completion times.

This platform enables global access to high quality radiation therapy planning for all patients, by providing access to highly specialized professionals, sharing our know-how, experience, and best practices to promote efficient radiation planning worldwide. 

Mercurius Connect is backed by a team who have completed more than 100,000 dosimetry plans in recent years  providing depth and experience to meet your excess or day to day planning needs.

Remote planning oncology

Mercurius Health guarantees you a personalised oncology treatment plan and follow-up with the best specialists. The combination of Mercurius Connect and our team of experienced planners creates immediately available capacity resulting in reduced wait times.  

One of the strengths that have led us to become the European leader in the provision of specialised radiotherapy services is that we have a team of more than 40 planners that deal with all types of treatment techniques and pathologies planning on multiple treatment planning systems. 

This, together with the support and close collaboration we provide to cancer centres and hospitals, has already allowed thousands of patients the benefit of receiving the most appropriate oncology treatment for their needs.

One of the strengths that have led us to become the European leader in the provision of specialised radiotherapy services is that we have a team of more than 40 planners that deal with all types of treatment techniques and pathologies planning on multiple treatment planning systems. 

 

This, together with the support and close collaboration we provide to cancer centres and hospitals, has already allowed thousands of patients the benefit of receiving the most appropriate oncology treatment for their needs.

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What exactly is our remote planning service based on?

  • Personalised contact and assessment of each case.
  • Treatment plans to meet or exceed requirements of the prescribed treatment.
  • Rapid delivery of oncology treatment plans per request.
  • Help to protect the clinical workflow and prevent bottlenecks in the patient pathway.
  • Reducing the stress related to planning capacity and knowledge while maintaining operational integrity.

This way of working allows us to provide the best consulting services, technical cooperation and operations support to our partners which in turn has a tremendously positive impact on their patients in need of cancer treatment, allowing them to enjoy a better quality of life as we reduce wait times by streamlining the planning process.

The objective of our remote planning service is to help health centres to offer the best possible care to oncology patients, taking advantage of the potential offered by the best technological solutions and, the latest generations of planning systems. We allow access to experienced planners anywhere, which is increasingly important since the lack of these resources is a major challenge globally.

Benefits of remote planning

  •  
  • Reduction of patient wait time to start the treatment – rapid turnaround times, streamlining the planning process through support to the local team.
  • High quality care thanks to the large team of specialised planners who ensure that each oncology treatment plan is completely personalised. 
  • Increase capacity - using the best professionals, giving hospitals more capacity to treat patients faster.
  • Continuity - on-demand availability to avoid backlogs during peaks in activity and cover holidays and unexpected absences, which normally compromise the timelines for treatment.
  • Training support - supporting continuous training of our client’s staff in new techniques without limiting the planning capacity.
  • Cost-effective solution by accessing large pool of experienced planners for flexible throughput without increasing your permanent team.
  • Competitive prices enabled by resource pooling and unique IT backbone which means that no upfront investments in licences or technology upgrades are necessary.
  • Data protection - extensive security mechanisms are built into the workflow to ensure data privacy and control, in full compliance with data protection requirements including GDPR and HIPAA.
  • Service development - faster ramp-up of new techniques to provide the best care for patients.
  • Team upskilling – side-by-side planning with training in real-time on real cases in new planning systems or new techniques.

Years of experience treating cancer in thousands of patients have allowed us to develop our own fast and effective treatment planning service. This is what makes our oncology service the most prominent in the industry.

The strong ongoing commitment to high-quality and advanced technology that we have incorporated into Mercurius Health allows any hospital centre that decides to partner with us to use the Mercurius Connect platform to offer all the advantages of our cancer treatment planning.

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The remote planning service that we offer at Mercurius Health offers countless advantages for the centres that use it.

oncology treatment

  • Reduction of patient wait time to start the treatment – rapid turnaround times, streamlining the planning process through support to the local team.
  • High quality care thanks to the large team of specialised planners who ensure that each oncology treatment plan is completely personalised. 
  • Increase capacity – using the best professionals, giving hospitals more capacity to treat patients faster.
  • Continuity – on-demand availability to avoid backlogs during peaks in activity and cover holidays and unexpected absences, which normally compromise the timelines for treatment.
  • Training support – supporting continuous training of our client’s staff in new techniques without limiting the planning capacity.
  • Cost-effective solution by accessing large pool of experienced planners for flexible throughput without increasing your permanent team.
  • Competitive prices enabled by resource pooling and unique IT backbone which means that no upfront investments in licences or technology upgrades are necessary.
  • Data protection – extensive security mechanisms are built into the workflow to ensure data privacy and control, in full compliance with data protection requirements including GDPR and HIPAA.
  • Service development – faster ramp-up of new techniques to provide the best care for patients.
  • Team upskilling – side-by-side planning with training in real-time on real cases in new planning systems or new techniques.

Years of experience treating cancer in thousands of patients have allowed us to develop our own fast and effective treatment planning service. This is what makes our oncology service the most prominent in the industry.

The strong ongoing commitment to high-quality and advanced technology that we have incorporated into Mercurius Health allows any hospital centre that decides to partner with us to use the Mercurius Connect platform to offer all the advantages of our cancer treatment planning.

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Mercurius Connect®, the Mercurius Health platform

Mercurius Connect is an end-to-end connection that our expert radiotherapy treatment planners use seamlessly and securely to communicate with clinical staff at our partner oncology centres. It is a service platform to request remote planning via center defined schedule, which allows access to experienced planners from anywhere.

 

With Mercurius Connect our intention is not necessarily to replace existing local staff but to complement and support by being available when circumstances impact the ability of local resources to perform the planning.

 

Mercurius Connect is a browser-based application platform that seamlessly integrates secure remote planning, scheduling and progress tracking, including notifications and feedback, through encapsulating communication securely protected within the platform. It allows everyone involved in the planning process to work together to schedule dosimetry more efficiently, and thus increase capacity and productivity while reducing wait times without losing the quality of the plan.

 

There is currently no other equivalent platform in the market able to connect oncology centres, planning systems and dosimetrists globally, securely, and efficiently.

With Mercurius Connect our intention is not necessarily to replace existing local staff but to complement and support by being available when circumstances impact the ability of local resources to perform the planning.

Mercurius Connect is a browser-based application platform that seamlessly integrates secure remote planning, scheduling and progress tracking, including notifications and feedback, through encapsulating communication securely protected within the platform. It allows everyone involved in the planning process to work together to schedule dosimetry more efficiently, and thus increase capacity and productivity while reducing wait times without losing the quality of the plan.

There is currently no other equivalent platform in the market able to connect oncology centres, planning systems and dosimetrists globally, securely, and efficiently.

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FAQs

The common misperception is that remote planning is outsourcing treatment planning. But it is not! It will provide access to highly specialized professionals in radiotherapy, on demand, where the lack of these resources is a major challenge. Hire a Remote planning service will guarantee a personalised treatment plan and follow-up with our team, with flexibility and speed at all times . The availability of remote planning make it possible to protect the clinical workflow against unforeseen events that may arise on the way to patient treatment, since there are a number of unpredictable events that may require the ability to cover or support the planning needs . Having this resource available will reduce the stress related to planning and maintaining the integrity of the operation.

Our process is straightforward. Typically, the process is started by an understanding of our customer’s planning needs and to address any concerns that you may have going forward with remote dosimetry. Remote access, through Mercurius Connect, will be installed on each workstation that will be accessed. The installation process is quick and simple, requiring only a few minutes to complete. Importantly, there is no transfer of patient data as all information remains within your network and the remote connection is fully compliant with HIPAA regulations. The Mercurius Connect Acceptance Test will be carried out to allow the verification and evaluation of both the remote connection to the customer's TPS and the correct functioning of all the application's resources and functionalities. Once a contract has been setup, you are ready to send plan-requests on demand with guaranteed response within service level agreement.

Our Proprietary digital Platform: Mercurius Connect. This platform is a browser-based application to request dosimetries on demand, used by Mercurius remote team and our customers for a secure and efficient remote planning process. In adition, it encapsulates comunication, allows dosimetry scheduling and progress tracking, which improves the workflow efficency. It´s a point-to-point connection to allow remote access to a TPS, to perform dosimetry and it will match each individual plan request with the most appropriate planner, based on their experience, at the same time as it wil manage the daily logistics to minimize response times.

Due to the nature of the service, security was a high priority requirement to ensure being able to meet standards for any region or country to which we might be providing planning services. When any user that has remote access authenticates for their connection there is dual factor authentication with individual account and password and then authenticator token number. There is no ability to save session or browser this has to be done at every connection/login. This allows access to the application which will then allow access to schedule and seeing which customer/patient number has been assigned to them. To then initiate a planning session they have to again authenticate with new token number to establish remote connection to customer planning system. This login also cannot be saved within browser and authentication has to be repeated if sessions times out or otherwise loses connection.

Our team has performed over 90,000 dosimetry plans during the last 25 years. We are highly qualified and experienced, treating patients every day in our partner clinics with the latest techniques. Our eplanning service is based on a personal and taylored assessment of each case that meet the specific needs of your Center. Our skillset includes all types of 3D plans, IMRT plans, VMAT plans,SBRT and SRS plans. We also offer remote dosimetry support for a range of treatment planning software platforms: Elekta & Varian

There are a number of foreseeable events that may require ability to cover or support planning needs in day-to-day clinical activity – parental leave, sick leave, holidays, congresses.. We are able to provide flexible coverage options, from short-term to long-term. Because ePlanning intent is not to replace local talent but to complement and support by being available when circumstances impact the ability of local resources to perform the planning

Contact us

Do not hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have or to request more information about how to incorporate Mercurius Connect® in your centre.