Proactively Monitoring Departmental Clinical IT Systems with an Open Source Availability System

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Proactively Monitoring Departmental Clinical IT Systems with an Open Source Availability System: J Digit Imaging. 2007 Sep 20

Toland C, Meenan C, Warnock M, Nagy P


Introduction

Authors from the University of Maryland discuss the implementation and outcome of Nagios, an open source system for proactively monitoring Radiology Information System (RIS) and Picture Archiving Systems (PACS). Nagios tools are used to monitor 68 systems and 108 monitored services.

Goals

To address the shortcomings in monitoring and systems management software supplied with commercial RIS and PACS software, University of Maryland (UM) installed Nagios (www.nagios.org), an open source “host, service, and network monitoring program”. Using Nagios development tools, UM created an automated RIS and PACS process monitor and notification system featuring a single user interface for web-based monitoring, real-time pager and email alerts, integration with their Help Desk software, and reports and inquiries for analyzing trends.

Results

The Nagios toolkit allowed UM to proactively monitor HL7 and DICOM interfaces and system queues to dramatically reduced the need for end-user reporting to notify IT of problems when an interface or server process failed or exceeded pre-defined limits. The authors provide details on the types and frequencies of alerts generated during their study period, and the overall impact of the monitoring system on user satisfaction and IT’s ability to measure and manage trends.

Comments

While a great deal of focus has been paid to disaster recovery and downtime planning, the need for ongoing process monitoring of interfaces and server processes is often overlooked. UM’s use of open source software to provide proactive (vs. user driven) alerts clearly pointed out the value of real-time system monitoring.

References

  1. [1]