Pierre Thirion, St Luke's Radiation Oncology Network
Biography
Professor Pierre Thirion is a French trained radiation oncologist, holding a permanent radiation oncology consultant position in the St Luke’s Radiation Oncology Network, Dublin, Ireland. He is also a clinical associate professor for Trinity College Dublin.
Medical training / Clinical positions:
Dr P. Thirion completed his basic medical training at the University Paris V-René Descartes medical school. He completed his Fellowship in Radiation Oncology (University Paris-V, 1990-1995), rotating through the main Parisian radiotherapy departments. In 1998, he completed an additional diploma in medical oncology (University Paris-XI). After working for 2 years as a Chef de Clinique des Universités - Assistant des Hôpitaux de Paris (Henri Mondor Hospital, Créteil, France), he moved to Ireland in 1999 and took a position of Clinical/Research Senior Registrar in St Luke’s Hospital, Dublin. Since 2002, he has been working as a Consultant Radiation Oncologist for the latter hospital, covering various hospitals across the country.
Postgraduate teaching experience/ Faculty involvement:
In 2005 Dr P. Thirion became involved in the radiation oncology Irish National training program, initially as the local training co-ordinator for St Luke’s Hospital, Rathgar, then as the National training co-ordinator until 2018. During the latter mandate, though close collaboration with the Faculty of Radiologists-RCSI, the radiation oncology National community, the individual radiation oncologists involved in the training program and the various stakeholders, the training program grew stronger. The main developments were:
- The accreditation of Cork University Hospital as a radiation oncology training centre in 2012.
- The expansion of accredited Spr training positions across the country from 10 to 16.
- The development of the National curriculum, including the integration the first edition of the ESTRO core curriculum (2011), that Dr P. Thirion was co-author of.
- The formalisation of the Part 2 examination through collaboration with the UK faculty of radiologists.
Dr P. Thirion was also an elected Faculty board member from 2015 to 2020 and held the Vice-Dean position in 2020. Dr P. Thirion was also successful in securing two post-CSCST ASPIRE fellowship for two Irish Sprs respectively in 2019-2020 and 2020-2021
Research activity/ publications
Dr P. Thirion completed a D.E.A. in radiobiology at the Curie Research Institute, Paris (University Paris XI-Paris Sud, 1996) and a post-graduate diploma in statistics (Trinity College Dublin, 2002). His areas of research and publications include (α) clinical trials methodology and meta-analyses, (β) the development of new radiotherapy technologies and (γ) the implementation radiotherapy-oriented clinical trials. Since 2019, Dr P. Thirion has been involved in the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in radiotherapy including the implementation of an AI-based Stereotactic Body Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR) plan optimisation program (RapidPlan®, 2019) and an AI-based volume delineation software (MVision®, 2023). He also completed in 2021 the MIT Sloan School of management Artificial Intelligence in Health Care course.