In the recent Guardian Public Services Awards 2008, Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust has won the Innovation and Progress Transformation Award.
The award was for developing an electronic identification procedure to ensure transfusion patients always get the correct blood, using the Bloodtrack suite of products supplied by Olympus UK.
Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals have achieved 100 per cent correct identification of blood transfusion patients by moving from an entirely manual process to an end-to-end electronically controlled system.
This uses robust software, 2D bar coding and PDAs to store, track and handle units of blood and to correctly identify patients and staff.
The electronic system also allows doctors to check a patient's latest blood count via a wireless link to the laboratory, while algorithms incorporated into the PDA guide the prescribing of blood based on the patient's most recent pathology results.
Placed over 100 clinical areas across three hospital sites, the Bloodtrack suite is incorporated into the hospitals transfusion procedures and offers staff real-time visibility as to the location and status of each blood unit.
This ensures safer blood transfusions through the controlled access to blood refrigerators, and leads nurses through the verification and transfusion process at the point of care where patients are all positively identified using bar coded wristbands.
The changes made to the transfusion processes at the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals have increased patient safety and led to significant cost savings.
