NHS Connecting for Health and the National Patient Safety Agency have announced they are looking for an acute trust to pilot IT specifications for electronic blood tracking.
A small, non-teaching hospital trust is sought for the pilot, which will begin in March 2007, to evaluate the IT guidelines developed by the NPSA. The NPSA’s aim is to reduce incorrect blood transfusions by 50% by 2010.
The test will build upon the work of John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where blood tracking Radcliffe in an effort to prevent samples for transfusion being switched or lost. The hospital completed a pilot in July last year using automated two-dimensional barcoding of every part of the blood transfusion process, with hardware supplied by Olympus osYris.
Upon the completion of the project, Mike Murphy, professor of blood transfusion medicine at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, had told E-Health Insider that the trust documented and prevented least one erroneous blood transfusion.
The guidelines will aim to cover not only the barcoding used at John Radcliffe but also RFID tagging of blood.
NHS CfH say the IT specifications are based on a wider project being undertaken by the NPSA’s Blood Safety project. These specifications are one of four sets of guidelines, due to be fully published later this summer.
CfH have promised to release a full information pack about the pilot next month, which will include its objectives, reporting arrangements and how to apply formally. Funding will also be available to the trust to pay for the appropriate technology, maintenance and evaluation.
For more information and to express interest for pilot, contact Sarah Crossland at sarah.crossland@cfh.nhs.uk by 15 September 2006.
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