Risk Mitigation Strategies for Custom Software in the Clinic
Presentations
PO-GePV-T-59 (Sunday, 7/25/2021) [Eastern Time (GMT-4)]
Purpose: One of the evolving roles of MedPhys 3.0 practice encompasses in-house software development and software development oversight. While in-house clinical software development is not new in medical physics, its widespread adoption and available vendor-provided tools are growing rapidly. Many physicists who are untrained in the best practices of software development have begun creating scripts for clinical use. There is an increasing need on guidance for both developers and medical physicists to code wisely in the clinic.
Methods: We surveyed both medical physics and non-medical physics literature and regulatory documents for guidance which could be applicable for custom clinical software. We then began practicing these techniques internally for clinical software development. The review was integrated with our institutional experience to form a practical guide to educate medical physicists in software best practices and to begin implementing these techniques in the clinic.
Results: We found little literature for custom software development guidelines targeted at medical physicists. However, we found several risk mitigation techniques including unit testing, code review, source control, end user testing, and commissioning from non-medical physics literature and created institutional guidelines for evaluating software for risk and implementing these strategies. The mitigation technique requirements were stratified by risk level of the software: low risk, moderate risk and high risk.
Conclusion: Our findings indicate there is a lack of guidance for developing in-house software for medical physicists. We integrated a literature review and institutional experience to form guidelines to help facilitate a safe software development practice for the next generation of medical physicists.
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