Radiotherapy / Nuclear Medicine / Health Physics Ideas for DLC

I have been playing this game for a while and absolutely love it and I have a few suggestions on implementing medicinal physics into the game! (Almost definitely would have to be in DLC as there are so many cool things about medical physics!!)

Lead walls:

As radiation has to be limited to everyone not recovering a scan or treatment, the walls, doors and windows around radioactive machines and sources could be lead lined (thus more expensive)

Health Physics:

1. QA Checks on machines such as X - Ray, CT, Angiography, MRI and other machines suggested below. This would involve a scientist with a physics specialisation who can perform quality checks on the machines putting them out of order for a brief period of time to make sure everything is working. If it is not then maybe a janitor with an engineer specialisation could be sent out to repair the machine. The machines could deteriorate with both age and usage as well as a random factor to keep the game unpredictable like in real life.

2. Perhaps if the machines fail the QA then the machines will be recommended to be fixed and if the repair is not made (due to the floors and inaccuracies of the dosage) the risk of a secondary disease such as cancer is caused

3. Ability to allow the physicists to travel to other hospitals off-site to perform QA’s there to bring in extra revenue during the physicists downtime

Nuclear Medicine: (Scientists could have either physics or Nuc Med specialisation)

1. Using radioactive iodine therapy to track thyroid function for hyperthyroidism and destroy the remaining thyroid in cases of thyroid cancer (for cases of thyroid cancer where a high does is administered some hospitals have radiation protected rooms where a patient would stay for a few nights)

2. Using technetium-99M to perform GFR kidney function tests to see kidney function or to determine if chemotherapy is to be used

3. Special storage rooms which radioactive equipment is stored behind lead lined walls to minimise exposure to the public and staff

4. PET-CT and Gamma Camera-CT. Both of these scans involve a source inside a patient and detected to in to visualise structures and their function. (i.e. it’s all good a CT showing a nicely shaped kidney but it won’t tel you if it is actually working and a Nuc Med department would be able to show this

5. Using radium therapy as a palliative quality of life treatment intravenously

Radiotherapy: ( Scientists could have either physics or radiotherapy specialisation)

1. Treating oncology patients with electron and photon therapy inside a linear accelerator (LINAC). This is a method of treatment where high energy radiation targets the affected area. It’s a lot to explain in this post but if anyone wants elaboration I’d be happy to follow up LINACS would be operated in the same way as another radiology machine except it is for treatment and would occur in several fractions daily so the patient would come in every day for a set time (in the real world it varies from 3-7 weeks). The treatment is often very successful but sometimes can cause secondary problems years down the line

2. Having offices for the radiotherapy scientists to ‘plan’ the treatment for the patients and driver they to the doctors to either approve or deny the plans and only when plans are approved does the scientist talk to the Rad Tech.



Woah. Ik thats a lot of ideas lol. I personally think however that medical physics is a very interesting and vital part of medicine. I think I have read elsewhere about a possible oncology DLC and I think these departments fit best there as they are quite related to oncology. I really did try to cut down anything that may remotely be unnecessary for the departments to work and perhaps Nuc Med would work without 1 or PET or Gamma Camera. I definitely think this could be a big task for the dev team or a modder and I get that

There is so much more to say about all of the points but this is just a brief overview and if anyone wants to know any more about anything please ask here and I’ll get back as soon as possible

Hi Maximus, thanks for the suggestion and the detailed breakdown!

While we don't plan to add Oncology ourselves, it should be possible to mod it in in the future - with the clear limitations of the game, especially that all patients are one-off cases etc.
I managed to find a reply I wrote when we got a similar suggestion via email, hopefully it gives some more insight:

"While oncology is a really interesting field, we didn't include it when we were choosing departments for the game/future DLCs mostly because of the different nature of the cases, as the game mechanics work the best with straightforward cases with a clear result that can be counted in statistics in a day or two and evaluated in prestige, objectives etc. Also let's not beat around the bush, this wouldn't be exactly content for every player, so some of the other choices made more sense.

Having said that, all the individual items you mentioned can be realized in the existing systems, so with with some compromises it could all work - and even if we prioritize other departments on our side, I wouldn't underestimate the modding community, by the time we start releasing DLCs it should be perfectly possible to add whole departments as standalone mods that can be shared via Steam Workshop."