healthcare

Background

Patient safety associated with the blood transfusion process has received considerable attention in recent years due to the propensity of transfusion errors to cause catastrophic morbidity or mortality. Human error leading to potential or actual mistakes in blood administration can occur at any step in the process. With nearly millions of patients in one hospital requiring blood transfusions annually, there is a tremendous need for blood products to supply these important therapies. Blood banks and collection centers require portable data collection terminals to reliably track blood from the donor to the final recipient.

Challenges

• There are thousands of blood bags in a blood bank. To find out the proper blood bag they need, clinicians had to check one by one to see the blood type, the expiration date and the blood test details. That was an arduous and time-consuming task.
• Blood bag collecting, storing, transporting and tracking involve multiple steps where manual data entry is required. Human operations and lack of real-time visibility can lead to human errors and a poor quality control of blood bag.
• When making an inventory, clinicians need to write down all the information first and then type it into a fixed computer. That was slow and the latest inventory status cannot be updated in real time. Delayed transferring blood would probably endanger patients.

Solutions

This automated blood bag tracking and management solution specializes in auto identification, data management and movement tracking of blood bags. Emagine
EH50 mobile computers ensure fast and efficient delivery of blood from donation centers to bedside transfusion. Through real-time tracking using barcode and RFID technology, the efficiency and speed of blood management is improved. Furthermore, the solution provides blood authorities with improved visibility into the inventory of different blood types at hospitals and can easily enable the supply of blood needed.

Application Details

Unique Identity Information
Each qualified blood bag is affixed with a unique barcode or RFID tag with corresponding identifiable information, such as blood type, the exact place where it is stored, collection date and expiration date etc.
 
Tracking and Traceability
From the donor to the final recipient, the movement of each blood bag has been tracked.
 
Data Interaction
All data can be transmitted to the backend system over wireless networks in real time, so that hospital administrators have real-time visibility into blood inventory.

Effects

• By an easy wave of our C5000 PDAs, all information is clear at a glance, like blood type, collection date, blood test result, and more.
• Contactless reading reduced the chance for the blood to be contaminated.
• The PDA can issue a warning if any blood bag is near its expiration date, which made sure each drop of blood had been fully utilized.
• RFID technology allows large volumes of tagged blood bags to be quickly and accurately identified and is especially designed for situations where blood bags are stacked or stored in any orientation.
• It eliminated manual records and transcripts and reduced reliance on human data entry.