HERCA statement on the work carried out on articles 78.2 and 63 of the BSS Directive 2013/59

HERCA statement on the work carried out by COCIR, EFOMP and ESTRO on articles 78.2 and 63 of the BSS Directive 2013/59

Heads of European Radiological Competent Authorities (HERCA), Working Group on Medical Applications

The collaboration between HERCA and COCIR established in 2011 has led to an important amount of work being accomplished in CT dose optimisation, management and reporting as well as establishing long term collaboration between COCIR and other stakeholders. A report on this work can be found on the HERCA website www.herca.org.

HERCA now welcomes the publication of the jointly developed Guidelines for manufacturers from COCIR, EFOMP and ESTRO to assist manufacturers and undertakings in meeting the requirements of articles 78.2 and 63 of the Basic Safety Standards (BSS) Directive (2013/59/Euratom) respectively. The guidelines address External Beam Radiotherapy and Brachytherapy and propose a format that manufacturers are supposed to use as model in order to provide information on radiological risk in an easy to use document. The information document will be provided by manufacturers at the time of supply of a new equipment while it would not be provided for old equipment that are not manufactured or sold anymore. Undertakings are encouraged to use these resources when carrying out their prior risk assessment for radiotherapeutic practices as, if used correctly, they should allow for all likely risks to be considered. HERCA would like to thank COCIR, EFOMP and ESTRO for their hard work and commitment to producing these documents.

A HERCA report on the work carried out can be found on the HERCA website.