ROSISwas established in 2001 under the auspices of the professional body “European Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology” (ESTRO), and has successfully established an international voluntary incident and near incident reporting system, a supporting website and an annual teaching course on Patient Safety in Radiation Oncology.

The establishment of ROSIS was visionary and timely – worldwide, organisations began to appreciate the burden caused by iatrogrenic injury. The potential of incident reporting systems to detect, monitor, and reduce the occurrence of incidents was recognised. Despite this, authorities doubted that anyone would voluntarily report incidents to an international system. Slightly ahead of its time, ROSIS succeeded in capturing the imagination and support of individuals and received reports on incidents in RO. More recently, countries are beginning to require individual hospitals to put reporting systems in place, and countries are beginning to collect reports on a national basis. ROSIS is still a leader in terms of having developed a discipline-specific, international, reporting system.