Dose Monitoring System Decreases Risk of Patient Exposure to Excessive Radiation

A new radiation dose monitoring system enables significant time and quality savings in healthcare and decreases the risk of patients being exposed to needlessly high radiation doses in conjunction with radiology examinations.

At the Radiology Society of North American (RSNA) 2012 Scientific Assembly and annual meeting, held in Chicago (IL, USA), November 25-30, 2012, the medical imaging information technology (IT) company Sectra (Linköping, Sweden) launched a radiation dose monitoring system, Sectra DoseTrack. “With Sectra DoseTrack, we provide our customers with a well-tested solution that contributes to enhanced efficiency and increased patient safety, says Marie Ekström, global business manager, radiology IT. The solution is developed in close customer-vendor collaboration and has been used in the Skane Region [10 hospitals in southern Sweden] for several years.”

As the population ages, the number of radiology scans is expanding and they are becoming more complex. By collating and comparing radiation dose values from performed radiology examinations, the care providers receive documentation that contributes to enabling the medical care sector to reduce radiation doses without impacting diagnostic quality. By automating data collection, the medical care sector saves precious time. The system also allows monitoring of equipment to detect whether an X-ray device exposes patients to too much radiation, or to follow up on individual patients to avoid excessive radiation.

Since 2008, Skane has been using Sectra DoseTrack as a regional quality system for radiation doses to collate, store, and analyze radiation-dose data from radiology scans.

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