To the Editor: Extramural certification of need by third-party carriers and state and federal governments and intramural capital equipment justifications suggest that new equipment, including information handling systems, whether dedicated or core facility, be able to handle a variety of tasks in order to ensure that systems do not stand idle. The following example of a previously dedicated computer facility may suggest avenues of justification that were not previously apparent to prospective purchasers and system designers of small facilities. The need within the Radiation Safety Office, the responsibilities of which include servicing a Nuclear Regulatory Commission Specific License of Broad Scope for radioactive materials, was to meet the license requirement that the office have on hand an inventory of radioactive materials held by each authorized user within the institution. I Each individual inventory listing must be verified quarterly by the authorized user. License requirements also include a specification that radioactive materials be separated by isotope. Therefore, for each individual user within the medical center, a listing of all materials labeled with tritium are to appear on one page; a second page will include all materials labeled with 14C. Note that a shipment received early in the year may last through the entire year, and perhaps shipments received later on are used on receipt. Furthermore, for additional purposes of identification, the Radiation Safety Office assigns an institutional identification number to each vial of material received and lists the manufacturer, manufacturer's catalog number, date of receipt, and initial activity in the vial. Summing up, Radiation Safety Office records must service approximately 50 different laboratories, each authorized to use at least 3 and some as many as 10 different isotopes in several different chemical forms with each individual shipment logged chronologically. Given 50 authorized users with an average of 5 different isotopes authorized per laboratory and perhaps four different chemical forms of each isotope, this results in a possible 1,000 line entries each quarter. Approximately 50 man-hours were consumed each quarter in order to prepare master listings and to photocopy, collate, and mail these listings out, log their return, and update the masters for the 250 files. Updating of files includes addition of receipts, decreasing the activity remaining in individual vials due to use, and deletion of entire line entries for vials whose contents have been depleted. This presents a classical case of scheduled, sequential updating of files. The computer, an Artronix PC-12, was purchased by the Radiation Ontology

Norman L. McElroy

Papers

A shared facility in a medical research institution