Year: 2021

10 Nov 2021
Permits lock icon on Odyssey platform
Odyssey Software, Permits, Radiation Safety Versant Physics 0 comment

Odyssey “How To” Series: Permits Module

Join us for our 6th edition of the Odyssey How To series with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters. We discuss how to carry out certain functions of the Permits module and answer some of your frequently asked questions. Scroll down to view a full transcript of the discussion.

Odyssey is a radiation safety software suite designed to help RSOs, EHS managers, and Radiation Safety Specialists manage affordable and efficient programs.

KB: Welcome to Part 6 of our 12-week How-to series highlighting Odyssey Radiation Safety Software. Today we’re back with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters to talk about the Permits module. We’ll be addressing some frequently asked questions about the module’s functionality and its use in enforcing permits and licenses. To get started, Katelyn can you give us an overview of the Permits module?

Katelyn: Absolutely, KB. The permits module is one of 12 modules of Odyssey that focus on radiation safety. It allows you to enter in any existing permits and licenses you have to actively enforce them when you add radioactive material inventory into Inventory Tracking, machines into the Machine Management, or Equipment into Equipment Catalog. By enforcement, I mean when you go to actually enter any of those inventory items into Odyssey, it’s going to check against the permit to see what types of inventory are allowed, where the inventory can be, authorized users, and in the case of radioactive materials, the allowed possession limits as well. If you do try to add inventory to Odyssey that conflicts with a permit, the software is going to prevent you from doing that and the addition of that inventory and let you know why.

To see an example of that, I can navigate into the Permits module and we’re going to go and focus on the Permits section of this today. This module will support as few or as many permits as you would like. Each of them has their own profile, which I can get to if select one by name. There’s a general tab of information, you can name the Permit, it will tell you what types of information it is enforcing within Odyssey—this one here has isotopes and survey meters that it’s covering—and issue an expiration date, as well as you can formally name some individuals for the permit.

Other important tabs that we have are the Authorized Labs tab. This doesn’t have to be a literal lab, but it will be any area that’s going to be authorized to house the materials that are authorized by the permit.  An Authorized User tab… so these could be authorized users or other individuals that relate to the inventory, as well as if it’s a radioactive material permit, you’re going to have this isotope tab where you can list out all those isotopes as well as their possession limits.    

KB: One of the questions that we are frequently asked is if the permits module can aid in compliance with other conditions listed on permits and licenses such as the need to survey or inventory on a certain frequency or wear dosimetry and PPE.

Katelyn: This module does support that.  We have, if I scroll down a little bit, an Authorized Conditions section where you can enter any of that information in as an authorized condition. And then when you go to perform a permit audit, which you can also do in Odyssey, these conditions can be referenced, and any necessary non-compliances or corrective actions cited in that audit that relate to the condition.

KB:  Good to know! I see a couple of buttons on the profile for reports. Are the authorized conditions included in the reports?

Katelyn: Yes, they are. Let me go ahead and select Permit Report and we’ll go take a look at that. To actually see the report, I will select the Generate Report button, and it will load at the bottom of the page for us. And depending on what types of information are enforced by that permit, you’re going to have different information on the Permit Report, as you might expect.

You’ll have a table of Maximum Activity Limits if you have radioactive material, if you have equipment or machines that are on the permit you will have tables for those, as well as an Authorized Locations section which is going to cover that Authorized Lab tab that we saw. To directly answer your question, KB, the Permit Conditions section here is referencing those Authorized Conditions that we just saw on the profile, and here will also break it down by category for you so you can see that information.

KB: Going through the module, I’ve been trying to think of how we could enter our information. We have one radioactive materials license, but internally we also assign allowed possession limits to each of our sites. Would we be able to structure the permits this way in this module?

Katelyn: That’s a great question and a pretty common use case for the Permits module. What I suggest in that scenario is to add one permit that has your overall license limits, and then one or more other permits for individual locations, and on those, you can designate the allowed activities for those locations. That way you can monitor both your overall possession limit and what you’ve internally assigned to each of your locations.

KB: Gotcha! Alright, one last question. If I need to change any of those limits, or authorized users, locations, or any other information that’s listed on the permit, can I do so?

Katelyn: Yes, so let me navigate back to the Permit Profile, it is linked from the report if I select the name. And any user with the appropriate permissions within Odyssey can edit the information for this permit at any time by selecting this pencil icon. When you do that, you’re going to see at the bottom of the edit form something called Make Amendment. And there are a few other places in this profile where you can edit information where this is also displayed. If I select this checkbox, it creates a formal amendment for that change which will be logged in the history for that permit. That lives on the Permit Amendments tab and going to that we can see some historical ones that were added in for different changes that occurred in the past. And this is really great to always have to reference if you ever need to figure out where a change occurred or when.

KB: And that wraps up our list of frequently asked questions for the Permits module. Thanks, Katelyn, for walking through the module with me and answering some frequently asked questions about how Odyssey can help manage an organization’s permits.

Katelyn: Thanks for having me, KB.

Schedule an in-depth demo with our Odyssey team to discuss how the software can assist you with your radiation safety management needs.

03 Nov 2021
Odyssey incident management dashboard
Inventory Tracking, Odyssey Software Versant Physics 0 comment

Odyssey “How To” Series: Incident Management Module

Join us for week 5 of our Odyssey How To Series with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters, where we discuss how to carry out certain functions of the Incident Management module and answer some of your frequently asked questions.

Odyssey is a radiation safety software suite designed to help RSOs, EHS managers, and Radiation Safety Specialists manage affordable and efficient programs.

KB 00:10 Welcome to Part 5 of our 12-week How To Series highlighting Odyssey Radiation Safety Software. Today we’re back with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters to talk about the Incident Management module. We’ll be addressing some frequently asked questions we get about the module’s functionality and its use in recording incidents. To get started, Katelyn, can you give us some background on the Incident Management module?

Katelyn 00:30: Absolutely. The Incident Management module is the most recent addition to the Odyssey Radiation Safety Software suite. It’s located in the bottom right-hand corner here. It can be utilized for your radiation safety program as well as more generally for environmental health and safety. It allows you to track incidents such as radiation events, injury, illness, equipment damage. And if I navigate into the module itself, we can see it has a dashboard that is very similar to the Personnel Dosimetry module, which allows you to see at-a-glance the number of open and closed cases that you have for your account, a breakdown of those incidents over time, as well as a subtype distribution for what kind of incidents are occurring in those total numbers for you.

KB 01:26: So is this like the Personnel Dosimetry dashboard in that I can also edit which widgets are displayed?

Katelyn 01:33: Yes. By popular request, we actually built this to have a lot of those similar features. And if I select this gear icon, I can add additional widgets via this Widget Select. I can remove any. So, this is a bulletin one here that allows you to add some news memos for users to see. But if I don’t want to utilize that I can always remove any widget as well. I can click and drag to move them around; I can also change the individual settings I want to see.  I just added in an example incident here, so we’ve knocked this down to zero days since the last incident. But I can also filter that to different types of incidents, different sites, as well as other graphs such as incidents over time allow you to select the time period and other settings.

KB 02:10: Well, that’s great! Um, I see on this page that the incidents are broken down into something called subtypes. Are these built-in options or are they customizable?

Katelyn 02:31: That is a great question. So, these are customizable, and if I use the navigational menus at the top of the page, I can go to a section called Case Subtypes. And this demo account has a variety of options that have been added. We have different injuries such as burns, chemical injuries, fractures, as well as some other items such as illness, fire, radiation event, near misses, workplace hazards, and equipment damage. And these are completely added as just examples. They can be customized for your program and the line of work that you might encounter.

KB 03:12: And how would I go about adding one of these incidents to the module?

Katelyn 03:19: Similarly to how we go to the case subtype, we can also go and use this menu to go to the Add Case screen. And from here I have a form I can fill out about the incident or case, as we refer to them in the software. I can select who the affected user was, so I’ll select our example person Ted. The type, so we have them broken down into just general and injury for this particular account, but I can get more specific with these subtypes. So, I’ll choose a Workplace Hazard. We also have the ability to enter in a site, and this is going to refer to the different sites in Odyssey which are also utilized elsewhere outside of the module. And a location description, if I want to get more specific I can go ahead and enter any text description as to where this incident actually occurred. The Incident date, I’ll just say today. And then we have a descriptive element section. This just helps you very quickly write out what actually happened. These are prepopulated statements that we set up during implementation with different categories. So you can see there are ones that pertain to damage, contact tracing, radiation exposures, insurance information. All of these are customizable phrases you can enter in.

So, since this one here was about a Workplace Hazard, I’ll actually go in and put something realistic here. Let’s go in and see our options for workplace hazards. There could be damage as a workplace hazard, so I’ll say that there was damage that’s internal and can be repaired on-site and that it is covered by insurance. So it just populates these different descriptions into here. As well as I can come in and I can also enter text if I want to. And then you can select the Save button and it’s going to add a case profile for you. This is where from here on out you how you go about adding information to the case and updating it during the lifetime of the event.

If I go back, I’m going to go to one of our cases that we have already added because it just has more example information for us to look at here. So here is a case on Equipment Damage. I can see I was the recorder for this, it was a general incident, it occurred in Building 5, more specifically in an office. And we see that Chris Wilson here was affected.

So, down below, this is where we have two tabs, one called Evidence, and once called Responses. The Evidence tab is intended for an administrator or someone who is coming in here and initially adding the case to Odyssey. For this particular incident, we can see that it was a computer that was damaged, and we have an image of that piece of equipment that has been uploaded.

The Responses tab is intended more for the affected users, so Chris here, or any other person that might have been involved that you need to get a response from. So this would be the admin coming in and requesting a response from any affected personnel to get their feedback on the event. And Chris’ response was requested, we can see that he had a response required by date of October 1st. He did come in here and respond saying that he had sent in the computer for repair. This is also a tab or area where you can come in and upload documents as well. So, if he has you know a repair document or invoice that is related to this, he can also add that to his response in this Files column.

KB 07:11: Well that seems really useful for tracking the resolution of incidents that need to be formally logged. I do have one last question though. How does the individual know when their response is requested?

Katelyn 07:19: That is another great question. We do have an alerts system that is going to be software-wide within Odyssey. And so, responses do fall into that category. You receive alerts through the Alerts and Taskbar that I just selected in the lower right-hand corner. There is an alerts section where post-it notes pop up with posted information; this is an example one about RAM Use Cards. But if you were to have your response required for a case, you would receive a notification of that via a post-it note alert like this, with text saying that your response is required and also linking to this particular case.

You can optionally also opt for email alerts. So, if you’re not coming into the software frequently and you still want to make sure you’re on top of all of those notifications you can get those emailed to your email address of choice as well.

KB 08:14: Well that sounds great! And that actually wraps up our list of frequently asked questions for the Incident Management module. Thank you again Katelyn for walking through the module with me and clarifying how users can use it to record incidents in their radiation safety or their EHS program.

Katelyn 08:29: Thanks for having me, KB.  

Schedule an in-depth demo with our Odyssey team to discuss how the software can assist you with your radiation safety management needs.

27 Oct 2021
Small cute dog examined at the veterinary doctor, close-up
Dosimetry, Nuclear Medicine, Radiation Safety, Veterinary Care Dr. Darrell R. Fisher 0 comment

Radiation Dosimetry for Animal Subjects 

This brief article describes ways in which Versant Medical Physics and Radiation Safety supports veterinarians and laboratory scientists who work with animal patients and laboratory research animals. Dosimetry is the science of measuring radiation and determining the amount of radiation energy that is imparted to living tissues. Radiation dosimetry is helpful in many medical science applications, such as correlating dose with biological effect, diagnosing disease, and planning radiation therapy for cancer treatment.  


Nuclear medicine is a fundamental medical specialty in radiology.  In nuclear medicine, radiologists administer radioactive drug products to patients to diagnose and treat many different health conditions.

In the healthcare setting, radiation dosimetry helps doctors to better understand the complex relationships between the amount (activity) of a radiopharmaceutical administered and the drug product’s biodistribution and metabolism in the body–such as its localization, retention, and clearance patterns. 

The biological behavior of the pharmaceutical inside the patient can be imaged using modern radiation-detection systems in two or three dimensions. The localized uptake of a radiopharmaceutical can indicate the function of organs, such as the heart, brain, liver, and kidneys (among others), and is particularly helpful in diagnosing cancer.

Radiation dosimetry provides the fundamental quantities used for radiation protection, risk assessment, and treatment planning. 

Animal subjects and humans are similar biologically in many ways. Therefore, different animal species may also be diagnosed and treated using the same or similar radiopharmaceuticals given to humans. And laboratory animals help researchers develop and test new drug products to ensure their safety and efficacy. Internal radiation dosimetry for animals has therefore become an important subspecialty of nuclear medicine physics.

Fundamental principles

Basic physics methods for internal radiation dosimetry are similar for animal and human models. Differences include the size and geometry of source-target organ pairs. Source organs are the internal organs for which images have been acquired or for which measurements have been made to determine the specific uptake, retention, and clearance patterns for the radioisotope. 

Target organs are the organs and tissues for which radiation doses are calculated. Recognizing the important size and metabolic rate differences among species, care must be taken by the nuclear medicine physicist to use correct calculation methods and the most relevant animal model.

Common animal species

In veterinary medicine, pet owners take their animals to clinics for evaluation and treatment of cancer, hyperthyroidism, and organ function.  The most common species include dogs, cats, and horses. In laboratory research, scientists use normal and immunodeficient mice, rats, rabbits, and sometimes dogs, monkeys, and miniature pigs.

Most biomedical research involves mice because they are less expensive, more easily housed and fed, and more efficiently bred for certain desirable genetic or mutational characteristics. Experiments with mice can also be accomplished in shorter time periods and with greater numbers for statistical purposes than other animal species. 

Optimizing radiation dose for diagnostics or cancer treatment

Radiation dosimetry guides the veterinarian when choosing the right amount of radiopharmaceutical for a specific purpose. Every radionuclide in the chart has unique energy emission characteristics, half-life, and chemistry for applications as drug products. Some radionuclides are good for imaging in the clinic, whereas others are more appropriate for therapeutics. For each type, dosimetry is important to determine the characteristics that provide either the most useful images or the most effective treatment.

In both diagnostic imaging and cancer treatment, which are subspecialties of nuclear medicine physics, a balance must be achieved between administering too much or too little. Too little diagnostic drug renders poor images, too much radionuclide results in poorer quality images, making medical interpretation all the more difficult. In cancer therapy, too little radionuclide may result in an ineffective therapy, whereas too much radionuclide may result in undesirable normal tissue toxicity. 

Excessive radionuclide handling in the pharmacy or clinic may also present an unnecessary radiation hazard to staff—or to pet owners, post-treatment. Radiation dose assessment helps veterinarians and research teams investigate the safest and most effective use of radiopharmaceuticals for the diagnosis and treatment of many disorders in animal subjects.

Dosimetry methods and models

For more than 50 years, specific methods and models for internal organ and tumor dose assessment have been developed by the special committee on Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging as a technical resource for both physicians and physicists.  The virtue of the MIRD approach is that it systematically reduces complex dosimetric analyses to methods that are relatively simple to use, including software tools for experimental and clinical use. 

Radiopharmaceutical dosimetry accounts for both physical and biological factors.  Methods for internal radiation dosimetry tackle the challenge of assessing dose for many different radionuclides—each with its unique radiological characteristics and chemical properties as labeled compounds—in the highly diverse biological environment represented by the living body, internal organs, tissues, fluid compartments, and microscopic cells.  Methods developed for human internal dosimetry are readily adaptable to animal subjects–taking into account the differences in size, geometry, and metabolic rates.

Why Versant Physics provides medical internal radiation dosimetry for animal subjects

Dogs, cats, and horses can be diagnosed and treated with radiopharmaceuticals for cancer and some non-malignant growths or overactive thyroid glands. Pet owners have often developed close family-like relationships with their pets, and veterinary care can be essential for preserving the animal’s health and well-being.  

The development and testing of new radiopharmaceuticals usually begin with laboratory studies in mice. When promising results are achieved in mice, the investigators may advance to dog studies or even early clinical trials in humans, if approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The FDA expects reliable and trustworthy radiation dosimetry for safety and efficacy evaluations. These assessments may rely on careful extrapolation of dosimetry results in animals to humans before drug trials can be approved for human patients.

Learn more about Dr. Darrell Fisher and his work in nuclear medicine physics here. Contact Versant Physics for your clinical dosimetry and personnel dosimetry needs.

25 Oct 2021
A machine profile in Odyssey
Machine Management, Odyssey Software Versant Physics 0 comment

Odyssey “How To” Series: Machine Management Module

Join us for week 4 of our Odyssey How To Series with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters, where we discuss how to carry out certain functions of the Machine Management module and answer some of your frequently asked questions.

Odyssey is a radiation safety software suite designed to help RSOs, EHS managers, and Radiation Safety Specialists manage affordable and efficient programs.

KB 00:09: Today we’re back with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters to talk about the Machine module. We’ll be addressing some frequently asked questions we get about the module’s functionality as well as its use in managing machine inventories. To get started, Katelyn can you tell us the purpose of the machine management module?

KW 00:28: Absolutely. So, what we’re looking at right now are the twelve modules of Odyssey. The Machine Management module is one of those 12, and it has tools that manage both ionizing and non-ionizing machines that are pertinent to your inventory. It allows you to keep track of your machines’ location, any responsible owner, related permits, and really any record that you need to for each machine.

KB 00:55: You mentioned both ionizing and non-ionizing machines. Are there specific types of both those machines that I can add to Odyssey?

KW 01:03: Yes. So, what’s really great about the Machine Management module… which let me go ahead and navigate into it here and we’re going to go to the main Machines list for your question KB… is that within this module you can create customizable groups of the types of machines that you want to keep track of for your program. And for this example demo account, we have X-rays, Lasers, and Non-Ionizing groups added. But, any of these can be changed or customized. This is something that can be set up for you during the implementation process of Odyssey, as well as an admins you have for your account can also come in and edit these at any time.

If I come in and select one of these it’s going to actually filter my machines list to that particular type of machine. I’ll go ahead and open a few of these profiles here so we can see the differences between different types of machines. Alright, so I’m going to have an X-ray machine and a non-ionizing machine open for us in these different tabs here. I have an X-ray machine, this Fuji example, and then I have a Non-ionizing machine for the Biotage example. We can see on both that these top six boxes here are going to be identical, and we can see that we have the exact same information here on this non-ionizing.

Now where it varies, and where those custom groups and information come into play, is with this Template Fields section. So, Odyssey utilizes something called Templates in order to set up those groups, and for each of your machine groups you can keep track of different information. It’s really nice because you can make it so that whatever you care about for this particular type of machine you can keep track of for your program, and you’re not going to be missing any fields of information that might be unique to you and your organization.

The X-ray group here, as an example, has a manufacturing date, information about the x-ray tube, the manufactured model for this x-ray machine itself, and then the inspection due date information. Whereas the non-ionizing machine is really pared down compared to that. We just have inspection information, manufacturer, model, and type. So it’s something that is completely different for every group. And we also have lasers on here too as I mentioned, and those are going to be completely different as well for what we’re keeping track of for those types of machines.

KB 03:32: So, the information displayed on each machine’s profile is also customizable, right?

Katelyn 03:38: Yes. So after you name your group, during that implementation process we’ll set that up for you to begin with, but if you want to make any changes, any additions later on down the road, there is a section of the software called Templates where you can change any of this information if you’re an Admin with the proper permissions. So, if I wanted to, I could go in and I can add additional fields of information that will show up on this profile, I can change the formatting of any of these or even remove any of these if they’re not relevant for me anymore. And that’s really nice because as your program evolves you can make sure that your database is reflecting those changes.

KB 04:13: And what is that update button for that’s included on this page?

Katelyn 04:17: Yeah, so we have one here, and you’ll see we have one on the non-ionizing machine profile as well. And you can have more than one, actually, on each profile. And what it is is this section, where it says inspection due is a due date associated with this machine. And for any of those types of due dates, the date itself is going to be added to the calendar of the owner. So Fred here has this date on his calendar, as well as any admins that are added to this account, so they’ll also be able to see that date on their calendar. In addition to that, we have an alerts system which will send alerts to you to give you notification, this is upcoming, so you can set that up to give you notification 30-days in advance, 60-days in advance, whatever your preference is, and that way you’re prepared for that particular due date, and you can make sure that whatever action needs to occur does in fact occur. And the update button is in place, so this inspection here, once this inspection has occurred, I can come in here and actually update this information on the profile.

As an example of that, this one here is due October 15th of this year, let’s pretend for a minute that this inspection actually happened today. I’m coming in here and want to update that information. What I can do is select that Update button, it’s going to automatically pre-fill with today’s date, so today is September 30, so we can see that date there. And if I do hit this Update button, what it does is then calculate out the next due date. This is setup to be an annual process for these inspections, so when I select this it calculates out annually for the next inspection due date. So we can see that it has progressed to September 30, 2022.

KB 05:59: That’s great. What if I have documents from that survey or that inspection, is there somewhere I can keep those within Odyssey?

Katelyn 06:08: That is a great question. So, we do have a very handy document section at the bottom of each profile. And you can see for the x-ray machine we’re looking at here we have two that were previously uploaded, a registration application and then a report of assembly. But this section can be used for a variety of different documents, so if you want to keep your inspection documents here you can. If you have a document of repair for that machine, registrations, anything that you want to associate with a particular machine and its profile you can put here. And we do also have a section for site documents as well, so if its maybe a facility registration and that’s something you want to have on a particular machine you can also upload it in that site section.

KB 06:52: Well that sounds great! And that actually wraps up our list of frequently asked questions for this Machine Management module. Thank you, Katelyn, for walking through it with me and clarifying how users can use it to both manage their machine inventory as well as track important due dates. Join us next week for Part 5 where we will discuss the Incident Management module.

Katelyn 07:10: Thanks for having me, KB!

Schedule an in-depth demo with our Odyssey team to discuss how the software can assist you with your radiation safety management needs.

20 Oct 2021
Odysser Reporting Module
Odyssey Software, Radiation Safety, Reporting Versant Physics 0 comment

Odyssey “How To” Series: Reporting Module

Join us for our third interview with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters, where we discuss how to carry out certain functions of the Reporting module and answer some of your frequently asked questions.

Odyssey is a radiation safety software suite designed to help RSOs, EHS managers, and Radiation Safety Specialists manage affordable and efficient programs.

KB 0:10: Welcome to part 3 of our twelve-week how-to series highlighting Odyssey radiation safety software. Today we’re back with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters to talk about the Reporting Module. Like the previous two weeks, we’ll be looking at some frequently asked questions we get about the module’s functionality and its use in generating reports. Katelyn, can you get us started by telling us what kind of reports are included in the reporting module?

Katelyn 0:35: Absolutely. To begin, the reporting module is one of 12 modules of Odyssey, which is what we’re looking at on our screen right now. And if I do select it here to actually go into the module, we have a Generate Reports section, which is what we’ll focus on for today’s call.

And reporting is really great because it is going to allows you to pull data from the other modules of Odyssey. If I select the report type drop down, we can see some examples of that. So, I have different radioactive materials reports that I can generate from here. I can also generate reports on my labs or areas that hold those materials, different users of the software and data associated with them, any permits or audits, as well as all of my inventory that’s in the system such as different machines, equipment, and waste management. So there’s really a lot of different options that you have for your report types once you’re in reporting.

KB 01:34: What if I want to change any of these reports, or even create my own. Can I do that?

Katelyn 01:39: Excellent question. Depending on which report you choose, you actually have different filters that are going to be available for your selection. I just chose the machines report as an example, and I have these additional filters that pop up called site, owner, permit, and template. And if I do select another one here, you can see I have different options so I have some different date fields at the bottom I can filter by.

Each of those are going to be different depending on your report. You also have the ability to include additional information or exclude any of the default information that’s going to be in the report. So for this machines report, if I want to include additional information about any of my types of machines such as the X-ray, Laser, or Non-Ionizing machines we have on this example account, I can do so. I just have to select one as my template. Then I have the ability to come here and pick which of the fields of information I want to include.

These are all custom fields that I set up for my X-ray group, and I can choose to include any of that information in the report. I can also exclude any default information. So, if I scroll down, this section right here includes information that was already going to be included on the report by default, and I can get rid of any that if I’m not interested in seeing that in my end report. Just go ahead and uncheck those and then we’ll be ready to generate it with all of our customizations.

KB 03:06: So, once I am done creating my report, how do I go about sending it to other people?

Katelyn 03:12: You have a few different options here. I’ll go ahead and generate the report so we can see a couple of those. And once I do hit the Generate Report button it’s going to display that report on screen for us at the very bottom. So, it says Machines report and then I have everything broken down by my different groups. On this one, we just included the X-ray machines, but if I were to have included lasers or non-ionizing they’ll be present in different sections as well.

And then you can see the different column choices that we made are going to be displayed in this table. So, you as the user can see this right away. But, in terms of your question in distributing this to others, you have two different buttons here where you can view and download this report as different file types. So, you can get a CSV file for use in Excel or a PDF, and those you can have and distribute either via email yourself, through a different email service, or you can put that onto a file-sharing site, whatever your preference is.

We also give you the ability to directly email that information out. So, if I come back to the top we have this Email Report tab. I can select from a list of existing users of Odyssey, so these are all going to be people on our demo account, so that’s why they have the interesting emails that they do. And, once I select those individuals, they’re going to be on my recipient’s list to receive this report. I can also type in an email address manually as well. Once I do that, these people I can email the report then via this email report button, and it’ll send that as a PDF attachment to them.

The other option we have is an automated report. So I can come in and add an automated report and what that’s going to do is allow you to set up a certain frequency which you want to email this same report to the same people. If you have a group of managers, for instance, that you want to email their inventory each month, this would be a great way to set that up. Once you set it up once, you don’t have to continually come into the software to generate and email those reports. Odyssey takes care of that and will send it to them on the proper frequency, once again as a PDF attachment in that email.

KB 5:20: And is there a way for me to change the format of the report?

Katelyn 5:24: Yes. So, we have one example here, which I’ll go ahead and show you. We have a PDF Template system, which is what this drop-down menu is for. And you’ll probably also recall that was one of the three sections of this module, we had a Generate Reports section, a PDF Templates, and a Mailing. The PDF Templates will allow you to create different formats for the PDF that you want to generate.

So, we have a Versant Physics one that we’ve created as an example. I’ll go ahead and recreate that report with the PDF Template applied. And, it includes then a Versant logo at the top, as well as we’ve added in some footer information with Versant’s contact info. This is pretty customizable for what you can include. It basically allows you to create any header and footer that you want. So you have the ability to include different text, different images, if you want to include a proprietary symbol you could also do that, for example. But it’s pretty common, and I see a lot of our clients really utilize it to add their logo in at some point in the PDF, as well as any additional footer information that they need to. And that’s just a way to create a more polished report for distributing to others.

KB 06:35: Do you have to be a licensed Odyssey user to actually view these reports?

Katelyn 06:43: I’m glad that you asked that. It’s something that comes up very frequently. You do not, which is a real strength, I think, of this module. I highly recommend that for people who just need to have information distributed to them from the software, that you do so via reporting. It really cuts down on the number of licenses that you might need, if they don’t need to interact with that data at all, but just need to have it to view, it’s a great way to get that information out to them via the email report tab here. You can type in their email address manually to this box, you can also have things added on file so you can pull that from the list of uses if you want to. But, it’s a great way to distribute that out, and like I said, it comes as a PDF attachment and they don’t need any additional permissions in order to view that data.

KB 07:34: And that wraps up our list of frequently asked questions for the Reporting module. Thanks again Katelyn for walking through the module with me and clarifying how administrators can use it to effortlessly create reports on their Odyssey data.

Schedule an in-depth demo with our Odyssey team to discuss how the software can assist you with your radiation safety management needs.

13 Oct 2021
Odyssey Inventory Tracking Module
Inventory Tracking, Odyssey Software Versant Physics 0 comment

Odyssey “How To” Series: Inventory Tracking Module

Join us for our second interview with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters, where we discuss how to carry out certain functions of the Inventory Tracking module and answer some of your frequently asked questions.

Odyssey is a radiation safety software suite designed to help RSOs, EHS managers, and Radiation Safety Specialists manage affordable and efficient programs.

KB 0:09: Welcome to part 2 of our 12-week how-to series highlighting Odyssey radiation safety software. Today we’re back with Odyssey Implementation Analyst Katelyn Waters to talk about the Inventory Tracking module. We’ll be addressing some frequently asked questions we get about the module’s functionality and its use in tracking radioactive materials. Katelyn, can you start by explaining a little bit about the inventory tracking module and its different sections?

Katelyn 0:35: Absolutely. So let me first go ahead and select the inventory tracking module out of the 12 available modules of Odyssey here. And once I do that, we’re going to have six different sections to look at here. We’re going to have a:

  • Master Tables section which is going to be a master list of any isotopes or compounds you might use in the organization.
  • Labs. We have a section devoted to labs that are going to house radioactive materials. They’re going to each have a profile of information.
  • Inventory holdings are going to be your unsealed sources, each with their own profile as well.
  • We have a RAM Use Card section; this is a really great way to get updates to radioactive material inventories from other users.
  • A Sealed Source section which supports leak testing.
  • And then finally we have a Lab Form section. So this allows you to very quickly fill out forms that relate to any of your labs in this module.

KB 01:30: So, for the section on labs that house radioactive materials, does the area have to be an actual lab?

Katelyn 01:36: That’s a great question. So, we have decided to use the name labs and it really could refer to an actual lab but it may not be as well. It could be an entire building, an entire site, a specific room. So really any location you can designate as a lab.

And if I go in and select this section here we can see the list of available example ones I have for this account. So you can see I have some buildings, I have some overall locations, some warehouses. So, it’s really flexible as to what you can put in as a lab here. And the advantage of doing so is once you add it as a lab it has its own profile, that I mentioned. And I can get to that by selecting the name of any of these here.

So if we go and take a look at Building 1, we have some general information about this building. Like, we can name what this lab is. I can give it a text or number category, a status, I can assign different individuals to it like a health physicist. Importantly, I can update the survey frequency here. And then I have these additional tabs of information. I have a tab that lists out the permits or licenses that relate to this location, maps for it. You can have multiple maps here, say if you want one for each different level of the building or if you want one for a different room.

Survey history, where I can come in and actually select any of these dates if I want more information from the survey for that date, or I can create a new one with this button.

A few other miscellaneous tabs. But the other important one that I want to make sure I point out is this inventory tab. So, this is a big benefit to this section of the module. So any of the locations that you have that house radioactive materials are going to have this tab where it will show you all of the inventory at that location. So you can see I have my unsealed RAM sources here, I have my sealed sources, and then in addition to that, it will also list out equipment and machines at that particular location. It’s really nice to be able to see all of that inventory all in one place.

KB 03:36: That sounds great. So, for the materials that are stored there, does this software do automatic decay calculations?

Katelyn 03:44: Yes. I’ll do an example of one of our sealed sources here. So if I come and take a look at this table we have the name of our sealed sources, a serial number for it, what’s actually contained in terms of the isotope there, the owner or responsible person, if there’s a permit of license that’s authorizing it that’ll be listed out, and then we get into some activity information. And so, when you go and add the sealed source or another radioactive material to Odyssey, to begin with, it’s going to ask you for the known reference date and reference activity. And so that’s what these two columns are. And once that information is in the software, Odyssey is going to use those dates and activities in combination with the half-life of the isotope to always be doing current activity calculations for you on any page refresh. So, all of these are just calculated when I came to the profile here. Like I said, that’s always going to be constantly updating. You can see this information in a few different places, it’s always going to be here on the inventory tab for the different labs, but also in those two separate sections that we already mentioned where you have your unsealed sources and sealed sources too.

KB 04:55: And if I needed to adjust or dispose of any of this material how would I go about doing that?

Katelyn 05:02: Absolutely. You can either go to one of those two sections we talked about, the inventory holdings section or your unsealed, or you can go directly to your sealed sources section. And that will allow you to see a table of different profiles for those materials. I can also just navigate there by selecting anything in these tables. Everything that is possible to be hyperlinked within Odyssey is. So if something you see on the screen has a profile you can usually select that to go to that profile. If I were to choose one of these RAM IDs it’s going to then load that profile of the RAM for me.

This one in particular we have the RAM profile for RAM ID 102 loaded. I can see who the owner or responsible person is, the permits or license that is authorizing it, where it’s at – it’s at building 1 here—what it contains, the compound and isotope, and then all of that activity information that we previously spoke of. Once I’m here, to directly answer your question KB, I have the ability to do some actions on this particular material, and those are found on these buttons in the lower right-hand corner. I can split this RAM, which is going to take this one profile and turn it into more than one, so I can have two, three as many as you want. And you can designate the activity for each of those, so this would be, you know if you’re actually physically splitting this material in real life, and you want that to reflect in your electronic records, you can do it that way.

You can dispose of it, which is one of the actions that you had asked about. So, if you hit this dispose button, it will prompt you to optionally transfer this to waste management. If you do have both inventory tracking and waste management modules, it’s really great for cradle-to-grave tracking there.

You can re-assign this material. That would be to a different owner, a different permit or license, or a different lab. Finally, the other part that you asked about was adjusting the activity. Adjust activity can be done with this button. And like I said, we are automatically calculating these activities, but if you need to manually adjust it for any reason you can do so just by hitting that button.

And anything that you change will show up on this profile as well, that’s what these two fields are where you have an adjusted activity and an adjusted date.

KB 07:17: You mentioned that sealed sources are kept in a separate section for leak testing. How do I view leak test information?

Katelyn 07:24: Yeah, so in order to see that let me actually go to that separate section. I’m going to back out to our main Inventory Tracking section, and this is what we had at the very beginning here of our conversation today with those six different sections. And I’ll go into Sealed Sources where that leak test information is kept. Like I mentioned we do keep these separate due to those leak tests and that workflow, so from this table, I can see which of my sources need to be leak tested. It’s listed in the last column of the table in the Leak Test Required column, and this information comes from when you initially add the source into Odyssey.

If I do choose one, like this one here which has an annual requirement, I can take a look at its profile and we’re going to have some additional information there. On any source that needs to be leak tested, there is a tab called leak test, and this tab allows you to add new leak tests if you want, but it also allows you to view any historical ones that have occurred. So, I can click on this date to get more information if I want, and it will also keep track of when the next one’s due. So this one occurred in May of 2021, and if I come back to my general information tab here, I can see that my next Leak Test is going to be due May of 2022 since this does have an annual requirement. This is really nice that this is automatically going to progress for you once you log a new one on that leak test tab.

KB 08:54: Can I receive reminders for those due dates?

Katelyn 08:56: Absolutely. That’s one of my favorite features of Odyssey is that anything that has a due date associated with a sealed source, machine, equipment, those due dates can push reminders to you which show up as alerts in our system. And they have a post-it note resemblance, they’re going to be in the Alerts and Tasks bar on the lower right-hand corner, and they show up in this format. And you can optionally also get email alerts. Say you’re not logging into this system very frequently; you can have those pushed to your email to make sure you’re definitely aware of those upcoming dates.

KB 09:31: And if I’m being inspected or audited, or maybe I just need to look at records for materials, can I do that?

Katelyn 09:38: Yes. That’s what this History tab is that we have added here that I haven’t spoken about yet. The History tab is going to log any changes that occur for your material, whether that’s going to be an unsealed source or sealed source. You can go back and see these examples here of this Vincent person and what changes he’s made and the date and time those changes were made. So if you need to go back and see when an activity change happened or where a source was, this is a great place to do that for regulatory purposes.

We also have a Documents tab, so if you’ve previously uploaded documents for the source that an inspector might want to see you can always find them here. Say you have a wipe test or some sort of shipment receipt label, you can put that here and always have those to reference.

Finally, say you have an inspector that requests information, but you don’t necessarily want to go through each profile for your sources, we do have a Reporting module which allows you to pull some comprehensive information for everything on the account, and then you can either download that as a CSV file or a PDF and email that to them.

KB 10:44: That all sounds great. And that wraps up our list of frequently asked questions for the Inventory Tracking module. Thanks, Katelyn, for walking through the module with me and clarifying how Radiation Safety Officers can utilize it to manage radioactive material in their radiation safety program. Join us next week for part 3 of our Odyssey How To series where we will be discussing the Reporting module.

Schedule an in-depth demo with our Odyssey team to discuss how the software can assist you with your radiation safety management needs.

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