Hoxworth Blood Center has selected Franek Technologies to safeguard its nearly $1.5 million investment in blood collection and immunology-HLA laboratory analysis equipment
Having experienced a number of costly power interruptions in the past, the blood center sought to institute higher-level protection consistent with national bioterrorism preparedness standards.
With Franek Technologies instrumentation-specific power protection solutions, Hoxworth is now able to protect every sample collected and ensure that blood collections in progress will continue, even should a power outage occur.
Prior to installing Franek Technologies' power protection solutions, Hoxworth had experienced multiple power outages, resulting in lost collections, testing data, and lost productive time.
Hoxworth estimates that each outage costs the blood center $10,000-$20,000.
With the increased use of automated blood collection equipment, where a power outage makes collection and analysis impossible and ruins collections in progress, Hoxworth needed to find a solution that could allow them to remain operational 24/7.
"Since our automated blood collection machines run on AC current, power outages are devastating for us," explained Michael Anderson, spokesperson for Hoxworth.
"It's not only that we are unable to draw blood during an outage, but if we are in the middle of a collection, we automatically lose this sample.
"Blood platelet donations, for example, take about 1.5 hours so it's critical that we can extend the life of our machines for at least this amount of time".
Franek Technologies certified Category III-3 instrumentation grade laboratory battery backup power protection systems currently protect each of the 35 units at Hoxworth, including automated blood collection machines, genetic analyzers, and flow cytometers from Abbott Laboratories, Applied Biosystems, Becton Dickinson (BD), Gambro - Trima, Haemonetics and Luminex.
"We selected Franek Technologies as our power protection partner because they were the sole company that was able to produce custom-built systems to protect our equipment, and their specs met or exceeded the manufacturer's specifications.
"We, at Hoxworth, are very pleased with our decision," stated Anderson.
Hoxworth serves as Cincinnati's Community Blood Center, serving a 15-county area in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.
The blood center, collects, tests, processes, and distributes blood and blood components to 25 hospitals.
The 2004 blood collection goal for Hoxworth is to collect over 90,000 units of blood from at least 55,000 donors.
