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We are very pleased to announce that Shaun Atherton, (The Christie Hospital Manchester) will be giving the Keynote speech at the Annual Event this year, which will take place in Savoy Place.Shaun Atherton is a chartered engineer and is team leader in radiotherapy and clinical engineering at The Christie. He manages the engineering requirements across a number of disciplines specifically: external beam therapy at The Christie main site and satellites; brachytherapy; clinical engineering; proton beam therapy; and mechanical engineering.

He has worked at the Christie for 24 years in various engineering roles, and on many projects. Most recently he has been involved in: the radiotherapy satellite centers; proton beam therapy; the linac replacement programme; and oncology management systems.

Synopsis of the talk


In 2009, a competitive process was launched to identify key trusts that would be able to support NHS England in a bid to bring Proton Beam Therapy to the UK. In 2010, The Christie and UCLH were selected as partners to work together to deliver a national proton beam therapy service. Following this, an approvals process with DH and NHS England led to final business case approval in 2015. To get to the point of business case approval, certain key activities had to take place based around equipment procurement, centre design, commissioner requirements, patient pathways and workforce consideration. 


First patient treatment date was set for later 2018, but between business case approval and first patient, lots of key activities had to take place. The centre had to be built to house the equipment, no mean feat in such a short space of time which led to the ‘bunkers’ being built first to allow an earlier ‘ready for equipment’ date. This allowed installation of the proton beam equipment to run alongside the ‘clinical’ build, and minimise the time to first patient. This in itself was a huge challenge, managing the interfaces between different stakeholders working to different timelines and conflicting requirements.


The presentation will highlight a few of the challenges, trying to show how the technology was installed to get to first patient, and how the design of the centre helped to achieve that goal.