Beth Israel Needham Names New Cancer Center Director

Someone is steering the ship at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham's upcoming Cancer Center. 

The hospital announced in a press release last week that they have named Doctor Robb Friedman as the Medical Director of the cancer center.

"We are very excited to have Robb on our medical staff," said BID-Needham President and CEO John M. Fogarty. “Dr. Friedman is superbly qualified for this role given his background in clinical leadership in both academic and community-based cancer programs." 

Friedman earned his medical degree, and completed his internal medicine residency at Georgetown University's School of Medicine. Doctor Friedman then went on to complete his fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at Tufts Medical Center.

“Robb Friedman exemplifies our vision of a leader,” remarked Lowell Schnipper, MD, clinical director of the BIDMC Cancer Center. “I know he will work with our physicians, nurses and staff from BIDMC to create an extraordinary team in Needham with the mission of providing academic medical center level care with the added benefits of convenience and highly personalized attention.”

The administration building at Needham's Beth Israel Hospital went down at the beginning of April, and ground broke on the new cancer center at the end of the week. 

According to an announcement posted Oct 2011, the new cancer center in Needham will house a number of chemotherapy services which were previously provided at BIDMC’s facility in Waltham. The facility closed in July 2011 when Children’s Hospital Boston, which owns the building, decided to use it for their purposes. Since then, some patients of the Waltham site have received their treatment here in Needham.

An earlier press release also indicates that this center is one of the first in the country, and the first in New England, to offer CyberKnife technology. It is a non-invasive, robotic-controlled system that delivers radiation to targeted part of the body.

For an idea of what the cancer center will look like, see the video on Beth Israel's website. 

The center is scheduled to open late summer of 2014.