Web site...✅
First workshop scheduled...✅
Now for content.
Welcome to ARC Theranostics!
I'm Dustin Osborne, a medical physicist, chronic problem-solver, and someone who has spent the better part of two decades trying to make advanced imaging and therapy actually work in the real world, not just in the literature. My team includes Amy Swinson and Taylor Gillespie who are both experienced nuclear medicine technologists and serve as clinical research leaders on my team balancing clinical therapies with imaging, dosimetry, and novel clinical trials.
My official titles are dad, husband, Medical Physicist, Professor, and Director of the Molecular Imaging & Theranostic Research Program (MITRP) at the University of Tennessee with a string of boring board certifications I won't make you read. But the short version is this: I spend my days at the intersection of molecular imaging, quantitative dosimetry, and the messy, practical work of getting good care to patients who need it.
This site and this ARC initiative is something I've wanted to build for a long time. And honestly, it's overdue.
My partner in crime in this endeavor is James Crowley, MHA, CNMT who is based out of Carilion Clinic which is the northeast anchor of the ARC corridor. He is also an Adjunct Faculty at Virginia Tech in Roanoke, VA,. James brings the kind of frontline administrative and technologist perspective that no amount of physics training can manufacture: the "yes but what does that actually look like at 7 AM on a Monday with late doses and a full schedule" perspective that keeps this whole effort honest. If my posts tend toward the scientific and theoretical, James will be here to remind us all what actually happens in the real world. Consider him the editorial check on my optimism and their team at Carilion is a key anchor for ARC.
Why this matters to me personally
If you work anywhere in Appalachia, you already know the answer. You don't need a convoluted white paper to explain access gaps in our region. You've seen them and experience them every day. You've seen the four-hour drives. The delayed referrals. The patients who are perfect candidates for theranostics, but whose local team doesn't yet have the confidence or the infrastructure to deliver it safely. You've sat with the uncomfortable truth that the science isn't the bottleneck anymore; workforce and site readiness is.
Theranostics have become a genuine standard of care. But adoption in community practice still lags, and not because community teams aren't capable. It's because most of the training is centralized, informal, and hard to access if you're not already plugged into a major academic center.
That bothers me, and frankly, it should bother all of us.
The "why" behind ARC
The Appalachian Radiotheranostic Coalition was created because of one idea our regional team kept coming back to:
education is implementation.
If we want these therapies to actually reach patients across rural Appalachia, the training model has to look different from what we've been doing. It has to be:
- Practical: built for Monday morning workflows, not just conference slides
- Multidisciplinary: technologists, physicians, referrers, physicists, and nursing all in the same room (or the same training platform)
- Scalable: materials you can reuse, adapt, and pass along
- Community-first: because this is a workforce problem that industry isn't positioned to solve, and we can't wait around hoping it will
ARC is anchored in a corridor I know well between Knoxville and Roanoke, with regional hubs and a real commitment to the community sites in between. It's not a grand theory. It's a working model, with designed intent to be useful.
What you'll actually find here:
I'm keeping this grounded in the needs of the two groups who matter most when it comes to access:
For nuclear medicine technologists, you'll find practical content on clinic-ready workflows and checklists, handling and safety fundamentals designed for community environments (not just academic centers), and the imaging and dosimetry basics that build confidence in implementing your own programs.
For referring physicians, you'll find clear referral pathways and timing, honest breakdowns of what the treatment workflow actually looks like, and a running conversation about how community adoption changes what your patients can realistically access without leaving their region.
An invitation...and I mean it
If you're a technologist or administrator building your program from scratch, a physician trying to figure out when and how to refer, or a community team asking "what do we actually need to be ready?" then this site will be for you.
Our goal is simple: shrink the gap between "this therapy exists" and "we can deliver it here, safely, for our patients."
If you're somewhere along the Knoxville–Roanoke corridor, or serving rural communities anywhere that looks like Appalachia, I genuinely want to hear from you. What's the sticking point? Referral confusion? Training gaps? Workflow templates? Staffing models? Dosimetry expectations?
Drop us a line. That conversation is exactly what this is for.
