Radiation Dose Tracking System Modernization

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Veterans Health Administration (VHA), National Radiology Program Office strives to provide high quality, effective, and efficient solutions to those responsible for providing high quality from the initial point of care through every follow up in an effective, timely and compassionate manner.

VHA requires a comprehensive, enterprise-wide Patient Radiation Dose Tracking (PRDT) system and accompanying support services to significantly enhance patient safety, regulatory compliance, operational efficiency, and quality of care. This system shall also empower radiologists, radiation safety officers, and clinical staff to more effectively manage VHA radiation safety programs.

The system shall be capable of aggregating radiation dose data from all types of imaging equipment and modalities, including X-Ray/General Radiography, Computed Tomography (CT), Fluoroscopy (both fixed and portable), Mammography, Bone Densitometry (DEXA), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Linear Accelerators, Dental Radiology, and Nuclear Medicine equipment and dosage.

The system shall also be adept at generating cumulative dose calculations, Peak Skin Dose (PSD), Effective Dose Equivalent (EDE) for transmission and emission imaging, organ-specific dose calculations, and tracking contrast administration and dosage for radiologic exams and procedures. Furthermore, the system shall be able to generate customizable reports for each modality, equipment type, provider, and user, encompassing all relevant dose and dosage measurements.

Users must be able to generate these reports at the local, regional, and national levels. The system shall provide Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)-compliant Radiation Dose Structured Reports (RDSR), Radiopharmaceutical Structured Reports (R-RDSR), and DICOM-compliant screen captures. Finally, it must support Health Level 7 (HL7) inbound and outbound messaging to integrate and aggregate radiation dose data across all VA facilities.

VHA requires substantial interfacing between the PRDT system and both the Veterans Health Information and Systems Technology Architecture (VistA) and Oracle Health (OH) Millenium. Throughout the VHA's facilities and Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs), a variety of Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) are in use, alongside the Electronic Health Record (EHR).

The PRDT system must seamlessly integrate with these diverse systems to ensure cohesive and efficient data management across the entire VHA network. This system shall be deployed to a total of 135 VA facilities across the country.