Julius Chapiro, MD, is co-director of the Interventional Oncology Research Lab at Charité University Hospital, Berlin. He was part of the Geschwind group at the time of the qEASL project, and says: “For me, it was a fantastic experience to be working side-by-side with an Ivy League-based PhD-level engineer. We talked every day, looking at the same clinical issues but from completely different perspectives. All the Philips people we worked with were really keen to listen to and learn from us. They really got to understand the clinical challenges we face in trying to tackle a tumor, and they taught us about the technical options and possible solutions. And throughout the development, we worked as a team. When there were problems we couldn’t solve individually, we could pool our expertise and address them together.”
About the collaboration timeline, he says: “One of the nicest parts about working with Philips was that at no time did they put any pressure on us to speed up development. They let us clinicians take the lead, and develop a strong first evidence-base on the use of the application. We are keen to develop the concept into an official guideline. Here Philips’ large network of clinical partners is a big help and we continue to work as a team along this exciting journey.”
