Toyota To Streamline Cancer Treatment Process

Toyota's expertise in improving production line efficiency will be applied to a different industry, with the Australian arm of the Japanese auto giant teaming up with St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne to help speed up treatment for cancer patients.

As part of Toyota's $15 million development program (funded in part by the Federal Government), Toyota personnel have been working to identify areas where radiation and chemotherapy treatment could be made more efficient. 

And thanks to the company's efforts, wait times between events such as blood tests, chemotherapy and waiting for results can be dropped from one hour to just 20 minutes.

This isn't the first time Toyota has collaborated with a healthcare provider, with the company previously having optimised St Vincent's pharmaceutical division to speed up the processing of prescriptions for patients.

Through the application of the Toyota Production System, the average time taken to pack a script dropped from 210 minutes to 34 minutes.

"We identified health care as a sector that would be able to benefit from Toyota's expert knowledge in running efficient production lines," said Toyota Australia President David Buttner.

"Through working with St Vincent's Hospital, our goal is to alleviate some of the stresses staff and patients experience with the current system, and allow staff to concentrate on improving their patients' quality of life.

"Our team of experts is working closely with the oncology unit to streamline administrative processes and appointments. Not only will this result in staff doing their jobs more efficiently, but more importantly patients will spend less time at the hospital."

Toyota Australia will continue to work with St Vincent's Hospital until the end of 2015.

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