Blood bank computer systems used in transfusion services

A laboratory director in Missouri asks for information regarding what blood bank computer systems are being used in transfusion services.

The Editors believe that the information in the September 2008 edition of CAP Today, Blood Bank Information Systems, may be helpful in answering this question.

The following comments have been received in response.

ADDENDA July 5, 2010

1. Dr. Ray Aller, Director of Informatics for the Department of Pathology at the University of Southern California (attribution used with permission) recommends a number of sources to determine what transfusion service systems are being used in hospitals. The primary resource is the survey of commercially marketed blood bank information systems that are published in CAP Today every fall. The most recent of these was September 2009. To obtain a copy, go to the cap.org website, click on the CAP Today logo at the bottom of the page, choose "2009 articles" from the right hand column (CAP Today Past Issues Archive), and scroll down to the September 2009 articles - the Blood Bank information systems (PDF) is listed near the bottom of the September section. It is important to keep in mind that some important caveats apply to these yearly tabulations:
   1. All entries are based on a questionnaire filled out by the vendor. For the most part, vendors have provided reasonably accurate information. However, it is recommended that the reader verify anything particularly important.
   2. Systems listed include applications for donor centers, transfusion services - ensure that the row marked "transfusion service" has been filled in.
   3. Only systems that are being actively marketed are listed. Many other systems are in use - they may have been sunsetted, or one vendor's business may have been acquired by another, to gain market share, or the vendor is simply devoting their attention to a different family of systems. One way of discerning this information is to review previous year's versions of the CAP Today blood bank transfusion system survey (also available on the cap.org website, back to about 2001). A system listed with 50 sites in a survey four years ago is probably still in operation in at least some of these sites.
   4. In addition to the systems listed in the CAP Today survey, a very important class of systems are those running in governmental hospitals – most are based on DHCP/VA-Vista, developed in the Veterans Administration, deployed in 160+ hospitals, and the variants deployed in the Indian Health Service, and in the Military Health Services. All told, these probably total over 400 sites.
   5. Not represented in the CAP Today surveys would be "home brew" transfusion service systems. While some hospitals developed these in the 1970's and 1980's, we rather doubt there are any still in operation, after the FDA began to apply strict validation and documentation regulations to blood bank systems in 1989.

Another source that might be considered is the KLAS organization – they conduct satisfaction surveys of a variety of clinical systems – mostly much larger scale (enterprise-wide). However, they may be willing to share data on systems installations. However, if the need is for data on hospitals in a particular community, state, or region, the above approaches may not help. Depending the size of the region for which information is needed, whether there are available staff to make the phone calls, it might be most efficient to work from a list of all the hospitals in the geographic region of interest, and call the laboratory in each hospital, asking to speak to the blood bank supervisor.

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