PACS Club of Kuwait: PACS KUWAIT

Showing posts with label PACS KUWAIT. Show all posts

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Top 10 Myths in Health IT

A talk given during Kuwait eHealth camp Dec. 2011

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Figure 1: CT Scan showing ruptured aortic aneurysm

A 63-year-old man who had been complaining for 2 weeks of “aching” in his lower abdomen was referred by his family physician to the radiology department of a hospital for CT of the abdomen and pelvis.

Two days after the CT examination, the physician telephoned a secretary in the radiology department, stating that he had not received a report of the CT. The secretary replied that she would investigate the matter and forward a report to him. Four days later, a nurse at the physician’s office again telephoned the radiology department to complain that a report of the CT examination still had not been received.

There is no evidence that anyone in the radiology department followed up on these telephone calls. Eight days after the CT examination, the patient experienced acute onset of excruciating pain in the lower abdomen and back. The patient was rushed to the emergency department of the hospital, where he was found to be profoundly hypotensive and tachycardic. Sonography was ordered and disclosed a 7-cm-diameter dissecting aneurysm of the abdominal aorta.

The patient underwent emergency surgery, which revealed a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. Surgical repair was attempted, but the patient died on the operating room table.

Questionnaire : Please answer questions below and then submit !

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Based on article
John J. Smith and Leonard Berlin "PACSand the Loss of Patient Examination Records", Malpractice Issues in Radiology, American Journal of Roentgenology, 2001

To Download full articlehttp://www.ajronline.org/cgi/reprint/176/6/1381.pdf

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Calculating your PACS storage capacity

I came through a nice table in a presentation from SIIM (society of Imaging Informatics in Medicine) which was showing typical image size and typical full study size for different digital images of different modalities in Radiology. See Table above.
This table will help in estimating the needed PACS storage. From your calculation of No. of exams/day, you can estimate the amount of storage you consume daily and then multiply this by the typical size of each study you will then get the your daily storage consumption (just like the calculation of film consumption in the old days.)
For example, if your department makes 15 CT SCAN cases a day, and by assuming that your study makes 1000 slices per study then each study will comsume around 1GB (assuming your CT is a new one with 1024x1024 image matrix).

Thus, 15 CT cases = 15 GB (per day)
15 GB/day = 15 x (30 working days) = 450 GB / Month
450 GB/Month = 450 x 12 (months a year) = 5400 GB = 5.27 TB

Thus, CT SCAN machine doing 15 cases/day will need a storage of ~ 5 27 TB/year.

Note. PACS admin should anticipate the department growth when using this calculation to estimate the PACS storage needed.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

FDA Recall Database

Key Words
FDA - U.S Food and Drug Association.
CDRH - Center for Devices and Radiological Health
CDRH Recall Database - This database contains a list of classified medical device recalls since November 1, 2002

What is a "RECALL" ?
A recall is an action taken to address a problem with a medical device that violates FDA law. Recalls occur when a medical device is defective, when it could be a risk to health, or when it is both defective and a risk to health.

URL for CDRH Database Search engine
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scrIpts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfRES/res.cfm

What Can you find in CDRH Database.

You can find recalls for many Medical imaging and medical systems. For example, PACS, MRI, US, FLuroscopy, etc...
you will be able to see Reason for Recall, Action taken, Class of Recall.
i.e, Recall for GE centricity RA1000 http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfRES/res.cfm?ID=70808

Class of Recall