NZPEM: New Zealand Branch Conference 2026
The New Zealand branch held its annual branch conference – NZPEM at the end of March.
It kicked off with a two-day registrar workshop on SGRT/motion management in which all New Zealand ROMP TEAP registrars attended. This was held at both Auckland City Hospital and at Auckland Radiation Oncology . Highlights of the workshop were practical demonstrations on Catalyst and AlignRT SGRT systems, and Synchrony, ABC, ExacTrac, 4D-CBCT and fluoroscopy motion management systems and imaging. Didactic presentations from physicists (including Juergen Meyer, keynote speaker for the NZPEM conference), a radiation therapist and radiation oncologists complemented these sessions - great to have such a variety of systems to see in action!
The conference itself opened with a P14Dwhiri at Whatua Kaimarie Marae. Here conference attendees received a formal Maori welcome and through whakawhanaungatanga and establishing connections, each person shared something of their ancestry. It was great to get to know each other in this way. This was followed by a traditional Hangi (Maori meal) and the manaakitanga (hospitality, kindness, generosity) from the 100whinatia Te Tangata00B team who support Maori patients at Te P16Briri o Te Ora, northern regional Cancer and Blood service who serenaded us with waiata Maori (Maori songs) during meal time.
68 people attended NZPEM itself consisting of ROMPs, DIMPs, TEAP registrars, MSc students, and vendors. We were privileged to have our college CEO Di Robinson and also college marketing officer MJ Valentine join us.
Highlights of the conference itself were our keynote speaker Juergen Meyer on “Building a Re-Irradiation Workflow” which was immensely helpful and practical; an amazing talk from Dr Samantha Holdsworth: Next-generation MRI and the making of Matai-demonstrating how world class research can be carried out in a remote community with great community engagement. Alexis Cameron assisted us in understanding our unconscious bias, and Brian Lunt led a multi-session workshop on CT optimisation which for both DIMPS and ROMPS was a comprehensive look at how attention to detail in a myriad of ways leads to the best quality CT images. There were of course many excellent academic presentations. Best Registrar/student presentation was awarded to Evelyn Yeo from Dunedin for her presentation on “Evaluating Equivalent Uniform Dose for Pre-Clinical Applications”. Best original work presentation for a ROMP/DIMP went to Andrew Williams, from Wellington, for “Monte Carlo Percentage Depth Dose Curve generation for the Xstrahl X150”.
Last but not least we enjoyed a conference dinner, at VYC, on Auckland waterfront.
Thank you to all our sponsors who enabled this conference, and we look forward to NZPEM in Tauranga next year.
