Since the mid-1980s, the Clinical Center of Serbia in Belgrade is one of the world’s largest hospitals, with 3,500 beds, a staff of 7,500, and 1,200 physicians. Now, the hospital has taken a great step forward in the course of the Serbian healthcare reform that aims to align the country’s healthcare system with Western European standards: in the fall of 2009, the new National PET (positron emission tomography) Center opened its doors in the basement of the Clinical Center. “Our PET Center puts us where we want to be: at the forefront of modern diagnostic technology,” says Professor Vladimir Obradovic, Director of the Institute of Nuclear Medicine. In 2005, Obradovic was appointed by the Ministry of Health to serve as the president of a project group, made up of radiologists, oncologists, and neurologists. The group was commissioned to prepare the introduction of PET in Serbia – not only with the National PET Center, but throughout the country by means of satellite centers: smaller units in every part of Serbia that are supposed to provide full-coverage care.

The National PET Center’s pride and joy is a Siemens Biograph™ TruePoint™ PET•CT unit. To help ensure that this system is put to optimum use, Siemens was involved in the planning process from the beginning on. “The Clinical Center provided us with 800 square meters in the basement of the facility and just told us, ‘okay, get to work’,” explains Ratko Krakovic of Siemens Healthcare. Together with clinic management and local service providers, Siemens developed a comprehensive solution covering everything from the center’s integration into the clinic to construction planning and efficient organization of workflows. The project management activities included the full planning for the unit in cooperation with architects and engineers. In addition, Siemens had to coordinate the work performed by nine supplier companies, which had been called in to provide a range of services from radiation protection to computer equipment and furnishings. In total, 19 sub-projects were implemented until finally, after just one and a half years, the government-run Institute of Nuclear Sciences for Radiation Protection granted its approval for the facility to start work.

The next step within the project will be the installation of a cyclotron to produce radionuclides so that the center can produce the contrast agents used for PET/CT scanning in-house. These will not only supply the National PET Center, but also the satellite centers throughout the country – which will also bring huge economical benefits: “Today, the costs of an exam run about 1,000 euros. If we produce the radionuclides ourselves, we can reduce that figure by about 60 percent,” explains Obradovic. “We will be the first center in the region to also produce radionuclides. It is a definite possibility that we could produce radionuclides for PET centers in neighboring countries, such as Croatia, Macedonia, or Romania.”