Experience with radiopharmacy information system.

Background: The efficient management of hospital radiopharmacy is very important for a good workflow in nuclear medicine and essential to ensure the correct traceability of the radiopharmaceuticals administered to patients. In the hospital radiopharmacy of our nuclear medicine department, it was developed and implemented a radiopharmacy information system (Radiolab).

Results: From its implementation, important additional functionalities have been added to this software application, according to our requirements and according as well to some of the specific requirements proposed in a recently published consensual tool for validating radiopharmacy software.

A simple method for checking the proper functioning of a thin-layer radiochromatograph for radiochemical purity control of radiopharmaceuticals.

Thin-layer radiochromatography is used for carrying out radiochemical purity control of gamma-emitter radiopharmaceuticals by using thin-layer radiochromatography scanners. It has been developed and implemented a simple method for validating the proper functioning of these instruments. This method helps to ensure accurate results in the radiochemical purity controls of gamma-emitter radiopharmaceuticals.

Freeware for reporting radiation dosimetry following the administration of radiopharmaceuticals.

This work describes the development of a software application for reporting patient radiation dosimetry following radiopharmaceutical administration. The resulting report may be included within the patient's medical records. The application was developed in the Visual Basic programming language.

Blood volume analysis by radioisotopic dilution techniques: state of the art.

In the last years, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of blood volume abnormalities in the pathophysiology of several conditions and, consequently, a growing interest of accurate and rapid volume status assessment. Accordingly, there has been a surge of interest in blood volume analysis by radioisotopic dilution technique. However, there are still some controversies about this technique, such as the use of the f-cell ratio, the errors associated with the method and the reference values.

Development of a new software for comprehensive management and traceability of hospital radiopharmacies.

A database software application for comprehensive management and traceability of hospital radiopharmacies has been developed and implemented. This software is a customizable shareware called Radiolab, which provides an immediate and complete traceability of all preparations, controls and radiopharmaceuticals, as well as a great help in the management of reports, orders, stock and radioactive waste. Available by now in five languages (English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian) this software and its manual can be downloaded from the Internet at www.

A portable database of adverse reactions and drug interactions with radiopharmaceuticals.

Unlabelled: Our objective was to develop a software application that allows us to easily manage a portable database of information on radiopharmaceutical interactions with drugs or other agents and on radiopharmaceutical adverse effects.

Methods: The application was developed and compiled with a commercially available data management system and programming language. All data entered into the database came from the scientific literature and were accompanied by their bibliographic references.

Development of a comprehensive software application for calculations in nuclear medicine and radiopharmacy.

Unlabelled: In the daily practice of in-hospital or centralized radiopharmacies, there is a need to perform reliable numeric calculations. Furthermore, several nuclear medicine diagnostic tests also involve carrying out calculations. In both cases, these calculations are sometimes complex or tedious and prone to error.