The Methodist Hospital has several different locations in and around Houston (including growth to places like Mexico City and cities around the world). Having consistency in care is an important aspect of Anatom-e's involvement. The physicians at Methodist are setting the standards that work for their physicians, equipment, expertise and protocol developments within Anatom-e Using these guidelines as "The Methodist Standards" it is easier to track, supervise, document and evaluate performance across many locations with a single professional peer review. Documented consistency is an evidence base.
Dr. Butler created a new FTE called "The Delineator." Dr. Butler uses Anatom-e to act as the published guide to support the "Delineator" in contouring all normal structures, secondary targets and lymphatics. The physician checks and supervises the work at each stage until it meets with the organization standard. "The Delineator" gets a complete sign-off and sends the plan to dosimetry for dosing/completion. With the addition of "The Delineator" Methodist has streamlined the most time-consuming aspects of the treatment planning process. This step has saved the physician 75% of his/her time as well as increased the quality of the entire departmental work-flow.
Dr. Brian Butler has taken the aspect of information driven image guidance to a whole new level of seeing, doing and understanding. The Methodist Hospital has converted a vault into a CAVE (computer aided virtual environment) to see high performance imaging, information maps from Anatom-e and immersive walls into the first interactive target delineation simulator. This is the environment to see all aspects of the Anatom-e up close. It may be the first time that true multi-disciplinary collaboration is working together in the same environment to support patient treatments and combination therapies. A room of this quality drives home that knowing exact boundries of target areas improves quality of care.
