The DMS has been progressively deployed in the hospitals covered by the regional PACS (Area Toscana Nord Ovest - A.T.N.O),
allowing the systematic collection of dosimetric indices.
The analysis of dose data are of fundamental importance in the evaluation of the dosimetric performance of radiology departments and allows to take prompt actions when dose variations appear to be unjustified.
Furthermore,
the DMS allows to create benchmarks to be used to optimize the procedures, to improve and maintaining protocols,
and to avoid unnecessarily high radiation doses.
The final aim is to achieve sufficient quality to satisfy the diagnostic needs,
whilst using the lowest possible amount of ionizing radiation.
The current installation of our DMS allows data collection from more than 15 hospitals,
monitoring a large number of equipment: 41 CT scanners (including 10 CT scanners in hybrid systems),
22 mammography systems,
46 digital X-ray systems and 2 angiographs (fig.
2).
After the technological deployment,
the University Hospital of Pisa implemented an organizational improvement,
by introducing a dose team steering committee,
with the aim of supervising the data collected with the DMS in the two hospital campuses of Santa Chiara and Cisanello.
The dose team steering committee is composed by a radiologist,
a medical physicist and a radiology technician.
Their task is to report to the Hospital's leadership about the data coming from both:
- the DMS developed by our regional PACS vendor
- another DMS which is dedicated to collect dose data from our 7 angiography equipment (fig.
3).
The dose team steering committee has the role to motivate,
support and educate radiology staff on the importance of maintaining best practices in order to limit patient radiation exposure as low as diagnostically achievable.
Its activity includes the organization of audits and of focused training to ensure that all procedures are optimized (fig.
4).
The work ot the dose team steering committee is supported by the informal multidisciplinary group DoseTeam4you,
which is already active since several years within the University Hospital of Pisa.