Changing the world: How Elekta fights cancer with HPE OEM Solutions

[MattQuirk]

When I think about HPE OEM Solutions partners that are changing the world, Elekta ranks high on my list. Its radiation medicine machines and software save lives every day, all over the world. While the latest hype cycle is all about generative AI, Elekta is using the latest high performing compute from HPE and NVIDIA to sharpen radiation therapy and fight cancer.

Understanding Elekta: how its hardware and software functions

Radiation therapy and stereotactic radiosurgery both use beams of radiation to kill cancer cells while minimizing damage to healthy tissues. Beams from an Elekta machine can pass through healthy tissue and zap a three-dimensional space deep inside an organ, a bone, or the brain—removing cancer in locations where traditional surgery isn’t an option.

These are not simple machines. Radiation therapy machines use linear accelerators, cyclotrons, and synchrotrons—apparatus physicists use to split atoms—to create high-energy X-rays and proton beams. In particular, Elekta has a dedicated radiosurgery machine that uses tightly focused gamma rays from Cobalt-60 to deliver precise, powerful doses of lethal radiation to tumors and lesions.

And that’s just the radiation part of the machine. Elekta machines also position the patient, image the procedure, and shape the radioactive beam in three dimensions for precise targeting—all of which are all compute-intensive workloads. A typical Elekta machine takes 275 hours to build, test, and ship. They weigh an astonishing 6.5 metric tons! For more about the manufacturing process read this fascinating article on the Elekta site.

On the software side, incredibly complex algorithms help physicians model the radiation beam, design and fine-tune radiation doses, and plan treatment courses. The software then operates the radiation machine as it performs treatments. In combination, these workloads add up to super-computing-level performance demands.

The latest in Elekta’s cancer technology

At HPE Discover 2024 in Las Vegas, Elekta introduced Elekta ONE and its next generation of treatment planning applications, which integrates the power of HPE DL380 G11 servers and NVIDIA GPUs L40. Benoit Sicotte, General Manager, Supply Chain at Elekta told us the new machines are “… going to compute about 10 times faster than before.”

Elekta uses the additional computing power for enhanced treatment design and increased beam accuracy, which means this new generation can deliver larger doses of radiation to cancer cells with less harm to the patient’s healthy cells. By safely increasing the radiation dose per treatment, Elekta is reducing the total number of treatments a patient undergoes. “It's a win-win for the patients because they make fewer visits to the clinic,” says Benoit. “And a win-win for the clinic, because they can treat more patients.”

For more, watch my interview with Elekta's Benoit Sicotte from the show floor of HPE Discover 2024.

Extending advanced cancer care to patients everywhere

Elekta is dedicated to expanding access to radiation therapy and radiosurgery to everyone, including cancer patients in developing countries where clinics struggle to afford the latest technology. Elekta’s ACCESS 2025 strategy has delivered an additional 720 linacs since 2020 of the latest Elekta radiotherapy systems to underserved markets and is on track to extending advanced cancer treatment to 300 million patients by 2025.

For every new machine Elekta installs, an older machine goes offline, but those older machines aren’t at the end of their useful lifespans. Elekta works with Radiating Hope, a nonprofit that supports radiation oncology centers in developing countries, to distribute previous-generation machines powered by ProLiant Gen9 servers to regions without access to radiotherapy.

HPE and Elekta—three decades of innovation and life-saving results

Elekta and Hewlett Packard (now HPE) have been partners for thirty years. In that time, Elekta has delivered over 10,000 radiation therapy and radiosurgery machines with the help of HPE channel partner Arrow Intelligent Solutions. Today, HPE OEM Solutions helps Elekta anticipate technological shifts and integrate the latest advances—like the newest NVIDIA L40 AI GPU. Generation-over-generation, HPE OEM Solutions has managed the computing complexities so that Elekta can stay focused on being a life-saving innovator in nuclear medicine.

We’re incredibly proud to be a component of Elekta products and a partner in its life-saving mission.