SU-F-T-95: An Automatic Data Verification Method During An Eclipse/Aria Version Upgrade Using Cryptographic Secure Hash Algorithm.
PURPOSE
To develop an efficient way to verify that patient plan and dose information does not change during an Eclipse/Aria database version upgrade.


METHODS
Eclipse Scripting Application Programming Interface (ESAPI) was used to create a script to retrieve plan information from the Eclipse database before and after the database upgrade for each patient on treatment. Using Cryptographic Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA256), fixed length digest hash values are generated from the plan parameters for each patient. The script is run twice to create two hash values, HVbefore and HVafter , before and after the Aria database upgrade. Separately, the delivered dose information for all patients was verified by comparing two hash values based on a crystal report summary for all patients treated within a date range. Lastly, an Excel macro is used to import the generated hash values for comparison.


RESULTS
If HVbefore is the same as HVafter , then the database is considered unchanged based on the collision resistant property of the cryptographic hash function. Otherwise, we conclude that the patient data may have been altered during the upgrade process. In testing the process, all patients passed the comparison. Without using this method, the time to verify a single patient's information was about five minutes. This would result in five hours of work for sixty patients. With this method, we can verify sixty patients in less than thirty minutes before and after the upgrade. This results in time savings of four hours.


CONCLUSION
An automatic database verification method has been developed using ESAPI, SHA-256 Cryptographic Hash Algorithm and Microsoft Excel. We found that the time to verify the database for sixty patients is less than one hour. The scripts can be integrated into Eclipse or can be run as a stand-alone executable program for a more automated process and increased time savings.