In the past decade, Radiation Oncology has become an increasingly "High Tech" enterprise. The use of multiple imaging modalities to acquire medical images, the process of outlining the patient anatomy, development of the treatment plan, and delivery of that treatment to the patient at the accelerator all involve intensive computer processing of patient data, and transfer of that data over high-speed networks.

I will discuss the problems and challenges of shepherding this patient data as it passes through the treatment delivery chain, with special emphasis on the IT environment as it currently exists in the new Stanford Cancer Center which opened for clinical use on March 1st., 2004.