Enhancing Radiotherapy Approaches Across Community Oncology Settings

A new agreement intended to combine evidence-based radiotherapy protocols with an artificial intelligence (AI)-based platform may create “a rising tide” for all patients with cancer, according to Louis Potters, MD, FASTRO, FABS, FACR.

Potters, 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®, spoke with CancerNetwork® about the key implications stemming from a multi-year agreement between Lumonus and Northwell Health’s Smarter Radiation Oncology® (SRO). The arrangement will pair Lumonus’ AI physician platform—a tool designed to automate administrative tasks like clinical preparation and documentation—with SRO directives for optimizing the delivery of radiotherapy to patients.

According to Potters, the agreement may enhance the care of patients who receive treatment outside of academic centers, as he touched upon issues related to access and technological limitations among those who reside in rural communities.

Transcript:

If you’re working in an academic center and you have internalized treatment approaches that are effective and work, that’s great. We’re not trying to compete with that. What we’re trying to do is enhance the care of patients who are treated outside of academic centers—which represents a majority of patients in the country—where physicians may see a complex head and neck [case] followed by a [patient with] lung cancer, followed by a [patient with] breast cancer. [We want to] be able to offer them a standard of care that reflects an academic cancer center approach that’s easily manifested through the Lumonus software.

Radiation oncology has—as you get into rural communities and whatnot—access issues [and] technology limitations. Then, there are the limitations associated with the staffing at some of these locations. The idea is to create a rising tide for all patients. The implications in an international arena are also significant; in third-world countries or less developed countries, to be able to provide state-of-the-art care and a standardized approach is appealing.

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