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Session: Medical Physics Practice Changes in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic [Return to Session]

Microsoft Teams® as An Operational Tool for Evaluation of Machine Performance and QA Tasks

M Gopalakrishnan*, S Kucuker Dogan, B Zawislak, T Teo, I Das, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL

Presentations

WE-E-TRACK 1-1 (Wednesday, 7/28/2021) 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM [Eastern Time (GMT-4)]

Purpose: Maintaining machine performance and service database in an academic department with multiple machines, different locations and various vendors is a challenging task. Microsoft Teams®, used for virtual meeting is explored for tracking machine status and performance.

Methods: Microsoft Teams®, a collaborative workspace hub for conversations, document sharing, assigning and completing tasks is utilized for machine related communications in the department. An equipment dashboard was created for each machine to assign tasks and alert physicist for necessary services. Physicist completes and add notes for the task which would then trigger an email to members alerting the status of the service, maintenance and QA. A timeline for each of the above tasks is maintained for assessing workflow in the system. As part of machine performance QA, this data is reviewed during the weekly physics meetings where all the machine related QA issues are discussed and remedial actions evaluated.

Results: Department maintains 5 Linacs, 2 CT scanners, GK ICON and host of other peripheral equipment at two locations with mixed vendors and different vintage. Teams® dashboard provides every information that is entered to the entire department and have reduced the bottleneck. It provides instantaneous information for the service issues, report and summarize the incidence of each machine in real-time. This information is vital for communication and for future planning. Machine related issues for different components including downtime, maintenance reports, service calls, physics support are visible and tracked. Visibility, communications, and overall management of equipment issues has dramatically improved after utilizing Microsoft Teams®.

Conclusion: Microsoft Teams® has been successfully implemented as a platform to track QA and service issues without investing huge amount of money or writing a code. It is concluded that Teams can be used in any department for providing essential communication and exchange of information among staff.

Handouts

    Keywords

    Quality Control

    Taxonomy

    Education: Application

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