Developing and setting up of a nuclear medicine information management system

Full text: With the advent and progress of information technology in the present decade, high-performance networks are being installed in hospitals to implement an effective and reliable Hospital Information Management Systems (HIMS). The Radiation Medicine Centre (RMC), is one of the earliest and largest nuclear medicine centres in India and several thousand patients undergo diagnostic as well as therapeutic procedures with different radiopharmaceuticals. The evolution towards a fully digital department of nuclear medicine is driven by expectations of not only improved patient management but also a well-defined workflow along with prompt and quality patient services. The aim was to develop and set up a practical and utility based Nuclear Medicine Information Management System (NMIMS) for various functional procedures at RMC. A customised NMIMS is developed with M/s ECIL using ASP.NET and SQL server technology facilitated by an IBM x3650 M3 Server, 18 thin-clients/desktop PCs and Windows 2008 server operating system and MS-SQL 2005 server software. The various modules have been developed to meet the requirements of different activities pertaining to patient appointment and scheduling, clinical assessment, radiopharmacy procedures, imaging and non-imaging studies and protocols, in-vitro laboratory tests, in-patient and out-patient treatment procedures, radiation protection and regulatory aspects and other routine operational procedures associated with patient management at RMC. The menus are developed as per scheduled workflow (SWF) in the department. The various aspects of SWF have been designed to ensure smooth, easy and trouble free patient management. Presently, the NMIMS has been developed excluding imaging data and we are in the process of setting up Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS) integrated to the existing database system, which will archive and facilitate imaging data in DICOM format in order to make a paperless department. The developed NMIMS is a browser-based online database system, which is independent of operating systems and enables prompt and reliable patient data access, information and management