AI Partnership May Optimize Standardized Oncologic Radiotherapy Delivery

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Louis Potters, MD, FASTRO, FABS, FACR, describes how evidence-based radiation protocols may integrate with novel artificial intelligence software.

In a conversation with CancerNetwork®, Louis Potters, MD, FASTRO, FABS, FACR, outlined how a new agreement between Northwell Health’s Smarter Radiation Oncology® (SRO) and Lumonus AI may advance the delivery of standardized radiotherapy for patients with cancer. In September 2025, developers at Luminous announced a multi-year arrangement with SRO, which may enable the embedding of SRO directives into an AI platform to expand access to validated, real-world prescribing standards at the point of care.

Potters described the history of SRO directives at Northwell Health, which helped establish consensus-based standards for effective radiotherapy in the community setting. Furthermore, he described how prior collaboration with Lumonus inspired an opportunity to spread the use of evidence-based directives across different cancer centers.

Potters is senior vice president, deputy physician-in-chief, and chair of the Department of Radiation Medicine at Northwell Health Cancer Institute, and a radiation oncology editorial advisory board member for ONCOLOGY®.

Transcript:

At Northwell Health, over the last 15 to 16 years, we have created treatment pathways that we call directives, which outline, in a very prescriptive and detailed manner, how patients should be treated with radiation therapy. Everybody recognizes and knows that there are 2 components to delivering radiation therapy: putting it where we want, which is the target; and not putting it where we don’t want it, which is avoiding normal tissues. The details associated with a written directive for providing state-of-the-art radiation therapy are a lot of work and a detailed exercise. We know that at academic centers, it’s done well. In the community, it’s not completely clear that these directives and treatment approaches match the standard of care.

What we’ve done over the years is develop a library of about 170 or so directives, which represents about 90% of all the patients that we treat, utilizing the latest evidence—they are constantly being updated based on evidence—as well as a consensus of the faculty in order to come up with a standard that we think represents a good way of treating. It’s not necessarily the only way of treating, but it’s a consensus based on the evidence. We’ve treated, over the years, closer to about 80,000 to 85,000 patients along these directives. We’ve looked at outcomes and edited them as the evidence has changed and improved. We’ve had discussions with a number of clinical programs around the country about their interest in utilizing them. We’ve done some work with Lumonus, which is a company that provides an upfront interface for radiation oncology practices as well as radiation dosimetry and physics services as a means of providing these directives through their software platform.

Reference

Lumonus announces transformative multi-year licensing agreement with Smarter Radiation Oncology® to bring evidenced-based directives to U.S. cancer centers. News release. Northwell Health; Lumonus. September 29, 2025. Accessed October 14, 2025. https://tinyurl.com/2s3wpsh7

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