On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 12:25:23PM -0600, boB Stepp wrote: > >> As I am the only person in our >> group with any programming knowledge (weak though it is), this means I >> usually wind up trying to solve issues as they arise. These client >> machines are dedicated to a single purpose: radiation therapy >> treatment planning. > > No offense intended Bob, but this scares me. I know you're trying your > best, but "weak programming knowledge" and "radiation therapy" is not a > healthy combination.
Believe me, I think about this constantly! The planning software we use is FDA approved. My add-on programs/scripts generally automate repetitive tasks to save the planner much by hand work. The other types of plans take the results of the plan and create a visual display to flag things we might want to look at more closely. Or send printouts of the plan in pdf format from the Solaris 10 planning environment to where they need to wind up on our Window's based record and verify software server. Or similar things that do not alter the plan itself. That is the important point: They do not alter the treatment plan. When I have something ready to use we check everything by hand for at least a couple of weeks. Medical physics evaluates my software as well. For anything remotely critical that might influence the evaluation of a plan, we do monthly QA to verify the constancy of the underlying data and calculations in case something we are potentially unaware of has changed. I constantly exhort my colleagues to use my scripts with a critical eye and report immediately anything, however, slight that is unusual and unexpected. I test and I test and I worry and I worry... But so far these efforts have not only saved time, but caught and prevented errors that might otherwise would have needed to be caught farther down in the review process. Now they get caught at the planning level and never even come close to getting further. The scripts generally either prevent the dosimetrist from forgetting to do something, make him aware of something he should examine more closely that he might not otherwise catch, and reduce the routine grunt-work burden. > I trust you are aware of the Therac-25 disaster? I have not looked at that particular one (But will now.), but can cite many more, especially those very recent. The New York Times not long ago ran a series of articles about this topic. -- boB _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
