Siemens Healthcare announces exclusive partnership with Prowess Inc.

Siemens Healthcare announces an exclusive partnership with Prowess Inc. to develop advanced radiation oncology treatment planning software for integration into Siemens' linear accelerators.

The combination of Prowess' unique treatment planning system with Siemens' leading oncology solutions technology will help provide users with one of the most effective and reliable radiation therapy treatment solutions available in the market.

This agreement authorizes Siemens Healthcare to share the basic intellectual property of Prowess' patented Direct Aperture Optimization (DAO) planning software, allowing Siemens to incorporate Prowess' software into the treatment planning tools for its linear accelerators. This, in turn, will help users to dramatically reduce the number of segments, monitor units, and overall treatment times.

"This partnership with Prowess will provide us the ability to deliver a solution that helps clinical teams treat patients more efficiently by reducing treatment times, dosage, and exposure of healthy tissues," said Holger Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer, Siemens Healthcare, Oncology Care Systems. "The open system architecture will enable Siemens to offer users one of the broadest selections of treatment planning tools on the market."

"Working closely with Siemens, we are developing a joint solution that combines Siemens' innovative oncology therapy solutions with our market-leading treatment planning system," said John Nguyen, CEO of Prowess. "We look forward to realizing the full potential of this partnership and continuing to drive innovation in the oncology field."

The Prowess DAO-based Plan-to-Patient tool* for Adaptive Radiation Therapy (ART) has been clinically evaluated and is planned to be available in the spring of 2008. The tool works with Siemens' unique CTVision(TM) System, a SOMATOM(R) CT Sliding Gantry on rails combined with an ARTISTE(TM) or ONCOR(TM) Linear Accelerator. DAO enables users to make on-line plan corrections based on actual pre-treatment CT scans taken in the treatment room, while the patient is on the linear accelerator's treatment table.

Siemens is also working on the development of a highly-efficient single arc radiation treatment called Cone Beam Therapy (CBT)*. The combination of CBT with DAO-based planning software will help improve tumor control for many disease sites, while sparing as much healthy tissue as possible.