Three hospitals have seen significant savings in blood stock, staff time and costs, following the installation of five Bloodtrack Hemonine remote issue blood refrigerators from Olympus UK.
The Royal London, Barts and The London Chest, which are all under the London NHS Trust, have benefited from the new system.
Driven by changes to the MHRA blood regulations, clinical staff at The Royal London Hospital site can now directly access blood from stock stored in special refrigerators on the wards without the main blood bank having to prepare and transport specific units while maintaining full traceability and tracking.
Bloodtrack Hemonine is a locking nine-drawer refrigerator for securely dispensing blood in locations beyond the blood bank, such as operating theatres and accident-and-emergency, oncology and haematology wards.
The Hemonine refrigerator is controlled by the Bloodtrack Ondemand kiosk to remotely allocate blood to hospital staff without any interaction with blood-bank staff.
When blood is required, it is automatically and safely dispensed, assigned and labelled for the specific patient at the Hemonine refrigerator.
Matthew Grantham, transfusion laboratory manager at Barts and The London, said: 'Bloodtrack Hemonine provides clinical staff with immediate access to blood products as and when it is required, when patients really need it.
'We currently have a Hemonine situated in accident and emergency and intensive care on The Royal London site, another Hemonine at The London Chest Hospital and plans for more systems in operating theatres later this autumn,' he added.
At The London Chest Hospital site, the installation of the Bloodtrack Hemonine refrigerator and Ondemand kiosk has made an immediate impact by decreasing blood inventory as well as reducing staff time.
Before the system was installed, blood was transported by taxi, as required, to the various clinical sites up to two miles away.
This process was time consuming, required laboratory staff and porters to be taken away from other key tasks and meant that blood products were often over-requested as additional 'just-in-case' units were ordered for each procedure.
With the Bloodtrack Hemonine system, the hidden costs associated with transporting blood have been significantly reduced, along with the time that blood products are out of refrigeration.
Grantham said: 'We have seen a 60 per cent decrease in the number of units transported to remote clinical sites and at The London Chest Hospital we have seen a significant reduction in the number of blood units wasted, down by 50 per cent.' Chris Broomhead, a consultant anaesthetist at Barts and The London, said: 'Since the Bloodtrack Hemonine has been introduced, we have reduced our blood usage in cardiothoracic surgery over the last six months by approximately 10 per cent, compared with the same period last year.
'The process of administering blood has become faster and more efficient, with reduced blood wastage,' he added.
Matthew Grantham continued: 'After working closely with the Olympus patient safety team, we have plans to expand the system further.
'We are very excited about the larger dispensing blood refrigerator, Hemosafe, which is due to go online soon, and we are also looking at other areas where the Olympus systems are suitable, such as phlebotomy, pharmacy, breast-milk tracking and positive patient identification,' he said.
