Ken Buckley - WAO'98 Abstract

   The TRIUMF PET group operates a cyclotron, targets, and
   radiochemical synthesis units at TRIUMF, as well as a positron
   emission tomograph in the University hospital on the UBC campus.  
   The group is very diverse in personnel, including physicists,
   chemists,  computer programmers, nuclear medicine technologists,
   and medical doctors.  The activity of the group is ultimately to
   use the technique of PET to carry out investigations of
   neurological disorders and as such we are production oriented. 
   However, along the way, many group members carry out research in
   their own particular area of expertise including isotope
   production, radiochemical synthesis,  and imaging techniques.  To
   support the hardware of this program there are only two dedicated
   technical people,  though we have access to other groups at TRIUMF. 
   We attempt to put in place systems that are user operable to
   minimize the day to day demands on our time.  Such systems are
   typically put together by one person who then becomes the only
   person with the full knowledge to quickly and efficiently trouble
   shoot problems in the production environment. Information transfer
   among the group is critical, yet the two physical locations and the
   size of the group (13 people) are factors that make this an effort
   to maintain.  How do we progress from this "fire fighting" mode of
   operation to a more reliable and robust mode that is not dependent
   on any particular person?