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Dr. Kendall Crookston, director of transfusion medicine and coagulation, looks at labels on blood units in a refrigerator at UNM Hospital on Wednesday.
Dr. Kendall Crookston, director of transfusion medicine and coagulation, looks at labels on blood units in a refrigerator at UNM Hospital on Wednesday.

A bloody upgrade for UNMH

by Jeremy Hunt

Daily Lobo

UNM Hospital's new blood refrigeration system is like a vending machine.

"This vending machine keeps track of each unit of blood, and it's connected through a computer network," said Dr. Kendall Crookston, director of transfusion medicine and coagulation. "So, it keeps track of each unit and all the data about what kind, when it expires, which patients it can be used for (and) who takes it out."

BloodTrack is a network of computers and refrigerators that manages blood inventory and keeps it between 2 and 4 degrees Celsius.

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One unit is the amount of red cells that are taken from a pint of donated blood.

United Blood Services supplies the hospital's blood bank, which has about 150 to 200 units on average, Crookston said.

Crookston declined to say how much the system cost because he did not know if the hospital wants to publicize the amount.

"It was a significant investment by the hospital because of patient safety and care," he said.

The system helps eliminate human error and has more than 100 alarms to alert staff when something is wrong, said Dr. Bruce Nonemaker, medical technologist for the blood bank.

"Every transaction that this thing does is recorded - even mistakes," he said. "It allows us to keep control."

Health care workers must scan into the system with ID, input a patient's information and scan the blood bag they remove from the refrigerator, Nonemaker said.

Parts of the system have arrived, and the rest is on the way, Crookston said.

It will be up and running in about six months, he said.

There will be seven machines throughout the hospital so staff can get what they need quickly without having to go to the blood bank, Crookston said.

"It's not that they need a lot of blood," he said. "When they need blood, they need it fast."

Crookston said a unit has to be cross-checked with a patient's blood before it can be used.

The system has a computer database that automatically matches the blood, and it allows only that blood type to be removed from the machine.

"We wanted to have blood available quickly," he said. "Most hospitals in the country take 45 to 60 minutes to cross-check blood."

It takes a minute or less to get a unit of blood from the machine, Nonemaker said.

Nonemaker said it's not easy to coordinate so much blood.

"It's a lot more work, but it creates a safety zone, which is what's important to us," he said. "If they only used it twice a year or three times, and they saved a life, it'd be worth it."

Crookston said the system has been successful in Europe

for years.

The FDA approved it this year to be used in the U.S., Crookston said.

He said there are two other BloodTrack machines in North America, one in Canada and one at Johns Hopkins University.

However, neither of those are the complete BloodTrack system UNM will have, Crookston said.

"We're the first ones in the United States that can fully implement this," he said. "I imagine in a year, when this is all working, we'll have people coming from all over to see how

it works."

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