Monday, 20 November 2006

Radiology Intranet

I have found that the transition to a fully digital Radiology practice is not one that can be done in one swoop. With this in mind I decided to implement some digital solutions in place of some regular systems within the practice I work for in order to make the transition a slightly smoother one. The first thing that was implemented was an Intranet.

I chose to create an Intranet to provide a means for distributing information within the practice via a digital medium, thereby allowing users to get comfortable with using the computers for more than their usual data capture type of usage. The following type of information can be placed on an Intranet:
  • Costing forms
  • Memos
  • News Letters
  • Telephone Extensions
  • Photo gallery
  • etc.
My ultimate goal is to make paper document distribution redundant and allow users to have access to an always up to date source of information.

The system I chose to put in place was an open source solution, because I did not want the company to spend money on something when there are perfectly good open source solutions out there. The system I chose was Mambo. Mambo is an open source CMS (Content Management System). It runs on any web server with PHP and MySQL installed. You can download WAMP server (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and create a web server very quickly. I however chose to use IIS (internet Information Systems) as I needed to add some added security with Active Directory and IIS allowed me to do this with ease.

List of applications you will need to get an Intranet going:
  • WAMP Server - Apache Web Server, MySQL Database Server, PHP Server Side Scripting
  • Mambo - Content Management System
  • Open Office - Office Suite with PDF export for easy uploading onto your Intranet
  • CutePDF - Creates a virtual printer that allows you to print from any program to a PDF file.
Some other usefully sites you might want to look into:
It is very usefull to have some PHP and MySQL knowledge as you can start to develop your own systems. I have currently developed a several systems which I hope to post here in the near future. The system I have made and am sill developing are:
  • A staff database with all staff information i.e. mobile phone number, telephone extension, etc.
  • An asset database with all the computers, printer, x-ray equipment, etc. Which allows users to log error's against the devices for tracking purposes.
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