Challenges:

From blood bank to patient bedsides, transfusion errors could occur at any step: mislabeling blood sample, withdrawing the wrong blood from blood bank, or mismatching patient with blood product. If not discovered in time, these mistakes can cause catastrophic morbidity or mortality.
 

Solution:
 
Uniquely Identified

• Every blood product is tagged with a unique identifier telling critical information such as ABO and expiration date. If a patient needs a transfusion, the blood bank worker selects the correct blood unit and that unit is given a barcode label assigned to that patient.
• Then the worker uses a Chainway handheld computer with barcode scanning capability to scan the product code and the barcode label to build a connection between the unit and the patient.
• An electronic message is sent wirelessly to the back-end system of the hospital. The ward nurse notifies this information, goes to the blood bank and finds the exact blood unit in the fridge.

 
Real-time Tracking

• Every blood bag is barcoded, and scanned at every step of healthcare process. Every scan sends an automate message to the hospital’s back-end server, indicating key information such as unit ID, date and time. The online history tracks all activity with fields above.
• In inventory management, healthcare handheld computer scans each unit’s unique barcode to make an automate inventory tracking.

 

Results:

1. Every blood bag is uniquely identified for reliable tracking from the blood bank to the final recipient.

2. Medical errors have been clamped down and patient safety has been enhanced.

3. With accurate inventory control, healthcare institutions always maintain an appropriate storage of blood products to provide all-time medical care.