No. 6: A clearer view of cancer care
People with cancer undergo batteries of tests that, over time, yield thousands of medical images. Doctors have sometimes struggled to comprehend the collection of these images in order to make the best decisions for their patients.
An Emory University scientist, Dr. Tim Fox, engineered a way to get a clearer and more comprehensive picture of cancer treatment. He did this by integrating vast amounts of medical imagery into a sngle platform. Through the technology, PET, MRI and other images — taken at different angles at different times in different locations — are resolved and managed in one unified environment.
Fox and others shaped a company, Velocity Medical, around the invention, and the benefits to medicine have been extraordinary. Treatment teams using Velocity’s platform – no matter where they’re located – need only to look at a digital dashboard to get a full view of a patient’s treatment over time. “It’s enabled a care team to make not only faster decisions, but also more confident decisions,” Fox says.
In 2014, Palo Alto, Ca.-based Varian Medical Systems purchased Velocity and chose to keep the enterprise headquartered in Georgia. The acquisition provided the means to bring an Emory doctor’s ingenuity into health care settings around the world, all for the purpose of improving cancer care.
Watch GRA’s “2-Minute Breakthrough” video on Velocity >
