Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust Chooses Technidata’s Td-Synergy-Bloodbank® For Multi-Site Blood Transfusion System
Technidata UK is pleased to announce that Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust have today signed a contract to replace its two existing blood transfusion systems with TD-BloodBank®, a market-leading component of Technidata’s TD-Synergy® integrated LIMS. TD-BloodBank, which includes comprehensive EU safety-compliant vein-to-vein features for automated blood testing, tracking, transport, transfusion and sample/patient matching, was chosen over five other blood management systems. The selection, which also included several LSP-recommended solutions, followed an extensive OJEU evaluation and short-listing process. The project is due to go live on 31st March 2006.
Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust is an integrated, multi-site facility that comprises Hammersmith, Charing Cross, Queen Charlotte’s & Chelsea, and Ravenscourt Park Hospitals. The Pathology Department works for Hammersmith NHS Trust as well as Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. The three sites combined process some 32 million general laboratory tests and 150,000 blood transfusion requests, and handle over 65,000 blood and blood products each year – a number that is projected to grow by 5-15% annually over the next five years. As a matter of urgency, the Trust needed a more robust and flexible blood management system that could integrate with its disparate systems, handle a rapidly increasing workload and support the ever-growing complexity of new hemovigilence and transfusion safety regulations.
Asked why the Trust chose Technidata over LSP recommended solutions, Laurent Debenedetti, ICT Director, Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust, explains: “Various competing products were put forward to us, but in the end we selected Technidata because it was a more modern solution and offered a superior platform at a similar price. From an ICT perspective I prefer Technidata’s technology, but even more importantly, our pathology users found TD-BloodBank’s advanced functionality extremely close to their needs.” In addition, Technidata’s ability to utilise Unix and/or Intel platforms, SQL and Oracle databases together with its single log-in environment not only meets Hammersmith Trust’s demanding technology roadmap but also dovetails with the aims of the NHS Connecting for Health programme.
Tony MacDonald, Pathology Systems Manager at Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust, went on to add: “Technidata came closest to matching our needs. Above all, we wanted a modern system with a relational database and Web-enabled capabilities. With one of our old blood transfusion systems, the hardware had reached the end of its lifespan, and the other system had become too expensive to maintain. In replacing them, we chose TD-BloodBank because it was the only solution that ticked all the boxes and met our extensive list of requirements – including over 300 different points. Many of these involved patient safety compliance issues, both at a national and EU level, some of the points related to our overall IT modernisation strategy and others involved our integration requirements – a vital aspect considering our multi-site/multi-system IT environment.”
As far as patient safety is concerned, Hammersmith recognised that TD-BloodBank’s advanced vein-to-vein storage and tracking system, TD-SafeTrak®, would be able to bring major benefits to the whole transfusion supply chain from the donor to recipient. In addition, Hammersmith has also signed on to pilot Pocket TD-BloodBank®, a portable version of function-rich TD-BloodBank that provides access to the system from networked and handheld devices, whether onsite or remotely.
“TD-BloodBank’s relational database and ODBC connectivity were two other features that were critical to our choice,” says Mr. MacDonald. “Technidata’s ability to integrate with our LIMS and our multiple hospital information systems will now enable us to gather all relevant test information together into patient-centric files for the convenience of caregivers. It will also give us the ease and flexibility we need to develop more complex management reports.”
Not the least of its benefits, TD-BloodBank also promises a highly competitive return on investment. As Mr. MacDonald explains: “Getting the funding for our new blood system turned out to be very straightforward when we pointed out that the cost of TD-BloodBank over a five-year period would be less than the cost of maintaining our legacy technology that offers less functionality and doesn’t support new safety guidelines.”
Dave Simm, General Manager for Technidata UK commented: “Technidata are delighted to welcome Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital as new users of our TD-Synergy BloodBank solution. We are particularly pleased to have been chosen in the face of such an exhaustive OJEU evaluation process and congratulate the Trust on its vision in choosing Technidata as a long-term technology partner. Not only are we able to supply a superior solution that integrates with disparate information systems across the Trust’s three sites, we are also best placed to handle critical issues such as patient safety in Blood Transfusion and its ramifications for haemovigilance and recent EU legislation.”
