[ RadSafe ] Electronic Record Keeping

Tue Mar 29 10:07:03 CDT 2016

Andy et al.,.

Interesting topic, but since we write the year 2016 this discussion comes a 
little late! How many years or almost decades this problem is known? In 
Austria there is every year a meeting of the official experts of 
governmental and "provincial" experts on radiation protection, including 
selected experts from hospitals, research institutes and universities. You 
may guess that the eminent experts of Greenpeace or groups like "mothers 
against nuclear power" are not invited........ About 15 or rather 20 years 
ago (I am happily retired since 12 years) one of the topics was a proposal 
to change record keeping to electronic forms. The discussion was rather 
fierce and mostly the medical doctors endorsed the proposal (probably 
because at that time it was a kind of status symbol to have a lot of 
computers, whether used or not.) It was also a time when computer programmes 
were changed (called "updated") every few weeks, which caused a lot of extra 
work. Furthermore it was not to be expected that small institutions or 
practitioners had the capability to handle the data. I put forward these 
reservations and within half an hour this question was solved in favour of 
paper.

The second point is the durability of data storage. At the time of this 
meeting computer technology was rather new and I admit that I thought like 
most others, that storage on these disks would last "for ever". When I tried 
to retrieve some original spectra many years later to use them in a 
presentation all were gone. Luckily I had had them printed a long time ago 
on paper(!) for another purpose so I was able to copy them into my 
presentation. So I learnt it the hard way and had to discard floppies worth 
thousands of Euros.

I saw a few days ago a programme on tv about the papyrii of very ancient 
versions of the bible, among others about the heavily discussed "Judas 
evangelium". Yes, it was possible to decipher words and pieces of it during 
years
of intensive work of real specialists, but I think it might be tiring to 
restore a gamma-spectrum this way - and what is it good for to know my dose 
I had 200 years before my death?

To go a little further down the time scale - why not use cuneiform writing 
to preserve my dose for thousands of years? If this is still not enough one 
might hew the numbers into granit stones . What I would like is to see are 
the faces
of the scientists reading my dose record 10000 years from now after having 
solved the miracle of what the meaning of these queer cycles, lines and 
other symbols is!

Enough nonsense, but strictly on topic (record keeping)!

Best regards,

Franz

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- 
From: KARAM, PHILIP
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2016 4:29 PM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Electronic Record Keeping

I would second Dimiter's comment regarding electronic records. 
Archaeologists have recovered legible paper and papyrus from Chinese and 
Egyptian tombs that are millennia old - not to mention the Dead Sea 
Scrolls - but I can't read the 5 1/4" floppy disk that my MS thesis was 
saved on. There is certainly nothing wrong with keeping the bulk of your 
records electronically - especially those that have a relatively short 
retention period. But I really think that, for absolutely vital records, 
there's no substitute for something tangible (paper, microfiche, etc.) to 
ensure that they can be read at least a few decades from now. And lest you 
scoff - when working on the EEOICPA dose reconstruction project we were 
often working with records that were 60 years old.

Andy

P. Andrew Karam, PhD, CHP
NYPD Counterterrorism
One Police Plaza, Room 1109
New York, NY 10038
(718) 615-7055 (desk)
(646) 879-5268 (mobile)

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Hans J Wiegert
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2016 11:54 AM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Electronic Record Keeping

I would like to get the group's opinion regarding electronic record keeping 
and the potential of going to a "nearly" paperless system.  Landauer has 
already started pushing industrial users to go paperless and there may come 
a time when we might see an advantage to storing many files electronically.
Redundancy and security are primary concerns.

Have a good weekend!

Thanks

Best Regards,

Hans

*Retirement is, when the only day you have to set your alarm clock is Sunday
- so you are not late for church!*
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