Do you need a dose management solution?

High-level care and a patient safe environment result out of a pro-active and continuous aim for quality. Consequently, quality should be the driving force in every radiology department in order to guarantee the best possible patient outcome and a radiation dose that is as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA). But how do you ensure a proper quality control and dose management?

Quality improvement

In order to improve quality in radiology departments, we should question ourselves what are the problems that we face and where there is room for improvement. For a radiologist, for example, process optimization is important as they have the task to define protocols to ensure that during every examination the right procedures are followed, no matter who is in charge. Radiographers can improve the quality of their work as well through a system that provides immediate feedback. Besides, we should strive to tackle problems in an early stage, direct outliers as well as systematic ones: the collection and systematic analysis of data is an important starting point in this process. Further on, internal and external reference levels are needed, which can be provided as well by the collection of big data.

Managing and registering dose has been a legal obligation since February 2018. Registering, saving and tracking radiation dose information, comparing against national DRL’s, recalling patient dose passports, and optimizing your daily dose management will be mandatory. However, not only legislation is the driving force behind these changes. Also, patients are more aware of risks in medical imaging and patient empowerment movements are more and more demanding. Consequently, radiology professionals aim to improve quality to reach for the needs of their patients, and their conscious increases about the importance of investing in quality and efficiency.

A dose management solution

In order to be able to continuously optimize quality and improve patient safety we need appropriate means at our disposition. Managing radiation dose via manual calculations or Excel sheets is a too time and cost consuming practice. A way to heighten efficiency and to work continuously on your quality is through the digitalization of this process, or in other words, a dose management solution: there is no need to invest any more time on the manual collection of data.

A dose management solution is a cost-investment that pays off in terms of continuous quality, time-efficiency and legal compliance. Because of the quick way to generate important insights through the collection of big data, it allows you to monitor relevant parameters in real-time, to detect problems through various data-analyses, to enhance the existing clinical workflow, … With a dose management solution, you can protect your patients at best by reducing dose and preventing future errors.

The conscience around managing and registering dose has risen tremendously last decade, and a quality-driven-culture is gaining importance in radiology departments. No doubt that legislative pressure is playing its role, but a bottom-up movement as well is key in which radiology professionals see it as their moral duty to continuously optimize quality. They are concerned about how to reach process optimization, detect communicational or justification problems, or mistakes of human or technological nature. To answer this demand for quality, tools for efficient dose management are of enormous importance.