Re: HP Assistant software

[mem122a@lanl.gov (Milton McLain)]

>To all interested parties;
>	Is anyone familiar with the information management software called
>"HP Assistant"?  We are considering the purchase of either CHAMMP or HP
>Assistant for our Radiation Safety Information Management.  
>
>	If anyone has any experience, good or bad, with either of these 
>programs I would be interested to know about them.  You can reply on the
>open channel, others may be interested as well, or send your reply to
>my e-mail address.
>
>	Thanks in advance.
>
>Rolin Geronsin
>Health Physics
>University of Colorado,Boulder
>
Rolin,

At Texas A&M Univ. (from where I recently retired), we were at this time
last year, evaluating what was available in these types of software
packages.  We generally discovered that there were "too simple" programs,
and "gross overkill" packages - witih little in between.  Another factor was
cost.  University radiation safety budgets do not normally have >$15,000 to
spend on such an item, right?

Through a contact at Texas Tech, Lubbock, we learned about Health Physics
Assistant, and proceded to examine it in more detail.  Bottom line:  We
(TAMU) purchased HPA last year.  It seems nicely geared to our magnitude
radiation safety program (TAMU has approx. 300 permit holders under our
broad license, and we receive >4000 shipments per year of RAM).  To no one's
surprise, we have found HPA still in need of "fine tuning", but we have had
good support from the vendor.  It would be more than "just nice" to have a
dedicated computer-knowledgeablef student worker or staff member to attend
to the management/maintenance of HPA.

For a more detailed discussion of HPA's pro and con items, you should
contact Christopher Meyer, my successor as RSO at TAMU, who can bring you
up-to-date on our experience with HPA.  His e-mail address is:
c-m-meyer@tamu.edu

Chris's phone no.'s are:        409-845-1362 Office
                                409-845-1348 Fax


Good Luck!


Milton McLain