Thérapie de proton : Pouvez-vous se permettre le ?
par Brendon Nafziger, DOTmed News Associate Editor | May 01, 2011
Proton Therapy
From the May 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“We’ve said that it will be under $20 million to put in a full facility, that includes cyclotron and everything,” IBA’s Hansen said.
Of course, single-rooms systems aren’t the only way to go. A little over twice the cost of the single-room systems but well below current systems is a new synchrotron design by ProTom International.
ProTom’s three-room project
McLaren Health System, a nine-hospital system in Michigan, is building a proton therapy center with ProTom’s tech. Day-to-day work on the site, expected to be finished in the fall, can be seen by anyone thanks to a webcam the hospital set up to record its progress. But that’s not the interesting part. According to McLaren, the cost for the whole center – synchrotron plus construction – is only around $50 million, one-third of the original $168 million estimate when McLaren first announced the project.
Cost savings mostly come from the synchrotron’s smaller footprint, ProTom said. It weighs 15 tons, making it much lighter than a typical 200-plus-ton cyclotron. There’s also less radiation exposure, so less shielding is needed. “The shielding at McLaren at the greatest width is five and a half feet,” ProTom’s CEO Steve Spotts said.
It’s also less of a power hog, and Spotts said the power savings could total “several hundred thousands of dollars” per year.
A matter of economics
But not everyone is convinced by the economic logic of one-room and lower-cost systems. While they might drive down the price of the equipment, they might not truly change the economics of proton therapy, according to skeptics.
“A one-room facility is a bit of a me-too strategy—we’d like to provide it, but we’re not going to make a $200 million bet,” Morrison told DOTmed News by phone.
He said while anything that reduces the capital costs of proton therapy will slightly increase adoption, the “real question is, what are the economics of some of these single-room solutions,” he said. “When you look at the all-in costs of a proton system, the facility and the staffing and all that stuff, and the throughput at least at current numbers, they just don’t work.”
However, he says some smaller hospitals or academic research institutions might take proton therapy up – at a loss – because they think it’s the best treatment and want to offer it to their patients.
But designers of smaller systems counter that with the throughput expected – for instance, around 400-500 a year for Proteus One, IBA estimates – they could be economically feasible. “We believe [we won’t be] sacrificing any throughput capacity even with four rooms versus three,” ProTom’s CEO said. “We believe the throughput will be very comparable.”
“We’ve said that it will be under $20 million to put in a full facility, that includes cyclotron and everything,” IBA’s Hansen said.
Of course, single-rooms systems aren’t the only way to go. A little over twice the cost of the single-room systems but well below current systems is a new synchrotron design by ProTom International.
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ProTom’s three-room project
McLaren Health System, a nine-hospital system in Michigan, is building a proton therapy center with ProTom’s tech. Day-to-day work on the site, expected to be finished in the fall, can be seen by anyone thanks to a webcam the hospital set up to record its progress. But that’s not the interesting part. According to McLaren, the cost for the whole center – synchrotron plus construction – is only around $50 million, one-third of the original $168 million estimate when McLaren first announced the project.
Cost savings mostly come from the synchrotron’s smaller footprint, ProTom said. It weighs 15 tons, making it much lighter than a typical 200-plus-ton cyclotron. There’s also less radiation exposure, so less shielding is needed. “The shielding at McLaren at the greatest width is five and a half feet,” ProTom’s CEO Steve Spotts said.
It’s also less of a power hog, and Spotts said the power savings could total “several hundred thousands of dollars” per year.
A matter of economics
But not everyone is convinced by the economic logic of one-room and lower-cost systems. While they might drive down the price of the equipment, they might not truly change the economics of proton therapy, according to skeptics.
“A one-room facility is a bit of a me-too strategy—we’d like to provide it, but we’re not going to make a $200 million bet,” Morrison told DOTmed News by phone.
He said while anything that reduces the capital costs of proton therapy will slightly increase adoption, the “real question is, what are the economics of some of these single-room solutions,” he said. “When you look at the all-in costs of a proton system, the facility and the staffing and all that stuff, and the throughput at least at current numbers, they just don’t work.”
However, he says some smaller hospitals or academic research institutions might take proton therapy up – at a loss – because they think it’s the best treatment and want to offer it to their patients.
But designers of smaller systems counter that with the throughput expected – for instance, around 400-500 a year for Proteus One, IBA estimates – they could be economically feasible. “We believe [we won’t be] sacrificing any throughput capacity even with four rooms versus three,” ProTom’s CEO said. “We believe the throughput will be very comparable.”
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