APUG EDUCATIONAL USERS MEETING
Philadelphia Marriott Hotel
June 2, 2000

The education meeting of APUG was held in conjunction with the SCAR 2000 meeting in Philadelphia, at the Marriott Hotel, June 2, 2000. Presentations were as follows:

Version 3.5 Problems/Suggestions/ Improvements: Presented by Bruce Parker, M.D. and Charles Willis, Ph.D.- Texas Children’s Hospital. Power Point presentation

Open Forum discussion on Sharing problems and solutions Q.A of systems was lead by Kathy Andriole, Ph. D. , USCF.

Q.A. :Discussions were held regarding structure of the Q.A. team. The team should consist of one member from any area impacted. Technologist, Radiologist, Referring Physician, File room staff, etc. Minimally, one Super "B" per shift to deal with fix queues and printing. Blue books are kept at each display station to document any problems and are reviewed by the team. Weekly meetings are held to review the problems and solutions and provide feedback. Several issues are configuration issues which are brought back to AGFA for resolution. Communication has a huge impact in the improvement and planning of system and changes.

Need for an O.R. solution: Currently the O.R. still provides a great challenge to overcome with PACS.

Prefetching for the Web 1000 is difficult

Display Q.A.: Recommend monthly monitor display Q.A. with a light meter.

Comment field is editable. This can be a problem. Therefore, referring physicians should not have the ability to save changes on the system.

Printing: Only the file room staff have the ability to print True size printing is needed

Routing: Pedi Exams are unable to be routed with present AGFA routing configuration. Solution is needed from AGFA.

Reject Analysis process needed

Quality Assurance within the system: Weekly reboots. Assessment of processing power. Review queues. Request to AGFA to develop proactive monitoring of queues and diskspace. Method to know if all cases made it to PACS.

Issues moving from Version 3.5-4.0: Steve Florence, Credit Valley Hospital, Toronto, Canada

Credit Valley Hospital was a Beta site for Mitra/AGFA in moving from version 3.5 to 4.0. The strategy employed was described as follows:

Game Plan filmless with the exception of Mammography. Alpha Site 100,000 cases per year

7 Radiologists

40/50 Web related referring physicians

Test Cluster set up to train radiologists prior to conversion

Training referring physicians and other users was the greatest challenge

Archive everything before bringing in Sunbase version for 4.0 (Weekend)

Everything down for 24 hours Oracle server

Monday morning up and running

Oracle hiccups experienced

Did not have any image loss

User profiles get lost and should be documented and reconfigured

Print options still difficult-

Availability of paper printers

New wizard features and macros increase efficiencies of radiologists

Ability to integrate speech recognition will be added next month

User wizard for Emer. Dept. and Ortho

Maintain ability to send and view images to 3.5 stations

NM/ export to PACS-contrasty SPEC image

Dicom standard of export from different NM Vendors hindered NM connectivity to PACS

Discussions ensued pertaining to Cacheless workstations with 4.0- Routing is no longer necessary due to the real time moving of images to review station. Prefetch and routing pulling are dependent on whether or not you have a dedicated or shared network

NWG is buried in the archive resulting in fewer boxes and more powerful

Migration PACS downtime was a major concern among attendees. Discussions on pre-migration possibilities and additional hardware availability from AGFA

Very difficult area was orthopedics using the split window – removed this option from their station.

AGFA plus Credit Valley personnel were the training team.

At the time of this discussion AGFA had performed 4 migrations.

Version 4.0 Problems/ Suggestions: Dr. Hayt, Elmhurst Hospital Center, New York

CD/ROM writer to be able to copy and view images anywhere or referring physicians

Review of system infrastructure and information

System impact on lost cases for turnaround time for dictation

Voice recognition –New RIS-PACS tighter integration

Closing of display is slow, sometimes 10 seconds

Mobile conferencing- projected

AGFA responded that many of these suggestions are due out or currently being reviewed /developed

Configuration Issues for Version 4.0/ Specialty Stations: Dot Artz, Tom Agar, Head of IMPAX consulting, Agfa Medical, Agfa Corp.

Open Forum Discussion –PACS in the Future: Moderator: Keith Dreyer, D.O., Ph.D., Massachusetts General Hospital

APUG Members:  To receive Powerpoint presentations of above presentations send an email request to .