Open Access Breast Couch

Open Access Breast Couch is a positioning platform for breast radiotherapy. If the patient lies on their stomach, radiotherapy can be administered more precisely, avoiding potentially harmful, or even fatal, side effects of the therapy. The device is currently used in three Belgian hospitals and has till now served hundreds of patients. Combining medical science with engineering and ergonomics, the design has been scientifically proven via clinical studies.

The jury on Open Access Breast Couch:

The positioning platform focuses on the comfort of both patients and healthcare professionals and on optimising the radiotherapy procedure. The solution is cleverly designed, based on research and properly developed to suit the specific production scale of this type of product. It offers significant added value over existing products, both in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.

What does this award mean to you?

A welcome recognition for the efforts put in over a long period of time by various people with diverse skills. This includes patients, researchers, nurses, doctors, physicists and manufacturers. 

How did the idea for this project come about?

Since 2008, Professor Wilfried De Neve’s team at UGent have been studying the benefits of the prone position for breast radiotherapy. In the process, it became clear that some key hurdles needed to be overcome to reap the benefits. This gave rise to the idea of developing a suitable posture, i.e. the prone crawl position. To facilitate this, a multidisciplinary team has been working on the design of an innovative patient positioning platform since 2014.

What makes your project so special?

The project was created without any commercial aims; the only purpose was to push scientific and medical boundaries. After several years of research, it was found to benefit patients in the research context. Afterwards, we realised that this device had wider potential and could be used beyond the confines of the university. In addition, the multidisciplinary co-creation has been unique. Commercial developers have much less access to patients and healthcare professionals cannot spend much time on such development efforts. However, this enabled us to develop a more effective device for all stakeholders.  

How does it contribute to a better world?

This device can spare patients harmful side effects in the short and long term. Such side effects may range from damaged skin to cardiac arrhythmias. For society in general, it can help reduce new hospital admissions, especially in the long term. This avoids treatment costs and unnecessary suffering. 

Do you have any further plans for this project?

The target market in Belgium is small, making expansion into Europe logical. We will talk to distributors to make this happen. In addition, the device remains a suitable platform for innovations. The researchers are working further on developing new applications.