Vendor-provided clinical physics services are a disservice to patients and the medical physics profession.

Abstract

Vendor‐provided commercialized equipment and software are well accepted in the medical physics profession, since they are designed to free up physicists’ time, improve workflow efficiency, and provide higher accuracy and precision. There have been clear lines dividing three parties, at least in the field of radiation oncology: patients, health care providers, and medical device suppliers. Medical physicists (and dosimetrists) are part of the health care providers group. One of their main duties, as defined by IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), is “mainly related to the safety and performance of related equipment and computer systems”. 1 Therefore, any financial relationship between medical physicists and medical device vendors should be clearly disclosed to avoid conflicts of interest (COI). However, in recent years, vendors of radiotherapy equipment and software are increasingly engaged in directly providing radiotherapy physics services to the clinic. This includes not only vendor‐sponsored equipment commissioning but also vendor‐employed dosimetrists conducting treatment planning (i.e., “software as a service” or “oncology as a service”) for radiation oncologists through its business subsidiaries. 2 The vertical integration of technical services, traditionally provided separately by vendors and clinical medical physicists or dosimetrists, may lead to unavoidable conflicts of interest and thus this parallel/opposed debate on the following opinion statement: Vendor‐provided clinical physics services are a disservice to patients and the medical physics profession. Parallel to this opinion is Dongxu Wang 1 . Dongxu Wang received his PhD in Medical Physics from University of Wisconsin‐Madison in 2011. After graduate school, he joined the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics as an Assistant Professor in Medical Physics. At the University of Iowa, he studied part‐time and received his Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) in 2019. He is now Associate Attending Physicist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Wang’s earlier expertise and focus were in proton therapy and proton imaging. Recently he became an active member of the Medical Physics Leadership Academy (MPLA), with a particular interest in using the case study method to advance the leadership and professionalism education for medical physicists. Opposed to this opinion is Per Halvorsen. Mr. Halvorsen is the Chief Physicist for the Lahey division in Radiation Oncology at Beth Israel Lahey Health in suburban Boston. He received his MS degree in Radiological Medical Physics from the University of Kentucky in 1990 and was certified by the American Board of Radiology in 1995. He has been a member of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) for nearly 30 yr and has been an active volunteer in professional societies, chairing the AAPM Professional Council and serving on the Board of Directors. He has authored numerous peer‐reviewed manuscripts, recently as the chair of the Medical Physics Practice Guideline for Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS) and Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) and as a member of the ASTRO–ASCO–AUA Evidence‐Based Guideline for Hypo‐fractionated Prostate treatment. He is a volunteer surveyor for the American College of Radiology (ACR) and served many years on its accreditation program oversight committee. He is Deputy Editor‐in‐Chief of the JACMP, and a Fellow of the ACR and AAPM.