During the week of Dec.12 in Portland, Ore., a milestone
was reached when the American Red Cross deactivated the last
DMS. The DMS is a laboratory Data Management System that had
been collecting, storing and interpreting test results for
blood centers worldwide since 1979
The DMS has been replaced with the next generation of
laboratory system, Surround. The Portland deactivation was the
culmination of more than 20 DMS-to-Surround conversions over
the past four years
“Today marks an historic event for the American Red Cross.
It is with great pleasure that I announce that DMS has been
officially removed from service at all National Testing
Laboratories, and regions are now live on IDM Surround!” said
Laurie Fagan, project manager for the American Red Cross.
“Having said that, we should reflect on how well the DMS
supported us in the management of our donations and test
results during its generation.”
The first DMS was installed in 1979, and by the early 1990s
about 10 million annual blood donations from both Red Cross
and Community Blood Centers were processed using the system.
More than 2 billion test results have been managed by the DMS
during the past 27 years, said Tim Coburn, president of
Information Data Management, which owns the DMS and Surround
systems.
Over the years the system was modified to support new
technologies and tests. By the late 1990s, the DMS hardware
was no longer supported by HP and IDM developed a new system,
Surround, to replace the DMS. IDM continues to support
laboratory testing for more than 25 blood centers in the
United States, Canada and Hong Kong.
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Welcome to IDM Accent, a quarterly newsletter aimed at
sharing pertinent blood-banking industry information, as well
as updating IDM customers on current events and
products.
This second edition of IDM Accent looks at the promise of
using RFID technology in blood processing and transfusion, and
reminisces about the DMS laboratory computer system that
served the blood-banking industry for more than 27 years. In
this edition we also look at how User Experience Design (UXD)
helps create a more effective and innovative user interface,
the importance of evaluating a vendor's system implementation
capabilities, the upcoming IDM Users Conference, and more.
If you are interested in submitting an article for the
next issue or have a suggested topic please email the editor at
idmaccent@idm.com.
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Radio Frequency Identification and Blood
Banking |
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Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has quickly become a
new technology that cannot be ignored. Its popularity in the
supply chain management sector has seen rapid growth in the
past few years. But, is it a player in the blood-banking
industry? Based on the research and information available
today, there is much interest in utilizing RFID in
blood-banking industry.
RFID is a microchip with a micro-antenna. The microchip
receives unique product information from a central computer
and is read by an RFID reader via radio waves. The data
transmitted can provide product identification along with
other pertinent product information such as location. The
advantage of RFID is that no contact or line-of-sight is
required to read the contents of the microchip, and the
microchip holds more data than a standard bar code.
In
a pilot program conducted by Intel Corp., Cisco Systems and
San Raffael Hospital in Milan, Italy, RFID verification
was used to address the sources of human and system error in
the blood transfusion supply chain. The outcome of the
study was positive and the RFID-based system is currently
being used for autologous transfusions at San Raffael
Hospital. The next issues Intel and its associates want to
address are platelet verification and traceability, and full
allogeneic blood traceability.
Another study
is being conducted at Georgetown University Hospital in
Washington D.C. This study is the first attempt to use the same
RFID tag to drive FDA Good Manufacturing Practices for donor and
unit-related data in the blood center, to upload unit-related
data in hospital transfusion service, and to ensure transfusion
safety using patient-related data at the bedside according to an
article titled “Making the Case for Bar Coding and RFID
Applications,” that appeared in Transfusion, March 2006, by
Susan J. Cook. RFID tags applied to blood component bags would
make the task of uploading the donor information into the
hospital transfusion service computer system easy, as well as
make the double check done at the patient bedside more accurate
and safe, according to Cook.
Click here to read more
about the studies at Georgetown University Hospital.
Dr. Judith
E. Woll, president of Community Blood Center and Community
Tissue Services, Dayton, Ohio, supports ongoing studies of
RFID and believes that one of the earliest applications might
be for tissue. “There is also a promise for using RFID
in blood center inventory management especially in recovered
plasma shipments where the technology will allow a whole box to
be checked without opening it and scanning each individual unit.
The same could also apply to units returned from a mobile
operation; a quick scan of the carton could enter all of the
units into the manufacturing system,” said Dr. Woll.
As more
studies are performed, the case for using RFID in the blood
industry will become clearer and concerns will be uncovered.
Currently, some of the concerns of using RFID include the
expense, standards and technical obstacles.
The cost of
RFID remains high and is a major drawback. "To equip a hospital
with a bar-code or RFID system for transfusions would cost on
the order of a million dollars in an initial outlay," said Dr.
S. Gerald Sandler, director of transfusion medicine at
Georgetown University Hospital in an article titled “Adding RFID
Layer to Blood Safety Loop”, that appeared in the CAP Today,
July 2005 issue . Dr. Sandler also notes that if the Department
of Defense, Wal-Mart and other potential high-volume users move
forward with RFID technology, as planned, its cost should drop.
T he
establishment of standards is another hurdle that will have to
be addressed before implementing the technology. “Expanding
the scope of RFID application across the health care services
network (e.g., hospitals, testing labs, blood banks,
EMS)
will require a concerted effort to develop industry-wide
standards for RFID technology and practices,” said Raj
Veeramani, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s
E-Business Consortium.
There are
also technical issues to address. “RFID doesn’t read through
liquids well, and finding the optimal placement for the tags on
containers still needs to be worked out,” said Dr. Woll.
IDM will continue to stay up to date of the progress of RFID
technology. Mario Sanchez, IDM vice president of Software
Engineering, is a member of the International Council for
Commonality in Blood Banking Automation (ICCBBA), America’s
Technical Advisory Group, which will keep him informed on any
progress with RFID in the blood-banking industry.
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How User Experience Design is Enabling More Efficient
and Easier Use of Software
By Bob Moll |
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As computers, digital devices and the Internet have become
more ingrained in our daily lives, people who use these
devices in the workplace expect a higher level of simplicity
and efficiency in the professional software applications they
use. The User Experience Design method is one tool that helps
system developers meet these expectations
A User Experience Design (UXD) methodology helps create an
innovative user interface that is more efficient and
intuitive. UXD takes advantage of visualization and
prototyping techniques to research and design products from
the point of view of the customer.
One major
challenge of software development is establishing effective user
requirements. Sixty-five percent or more of software
development projects are abandoned before completion or do not
meet the users’ expectations, according to The Standish Group’s
2003 CHAOS Report, which shows a success rate of 31 percent, up
from 28 percent in 2001 and 16 percent in 1994.
“Requirements
visualization, combined with rapid prototyping, allows business
users, designers and developers to all be on the same page
before the actual programming begins,” said Paul Dittmann,
director of Pathfinder Associates. “These techniques may reduce
rework and the corresponding costs by 40 percent to 60 percent.”
Reducing
rework is important because rework costs average 30 percent of
total development costs, according to Forrester Research, an
independent technology and research company out of Cambridge,
Mass. Seventy percent of rework is the result of poor definition
of the intended users, their requirements and the tasks they
need to perform, according to META Group, a provider of
information technology research.
Pathfinder
Associates, a Chicago-based design and software consulting firm,
has an UXD methodology that has been utilized on more than a
dozen successful design projects in the past three years.
IDM has
enlisted the services of Pathfinder Associates to help tame the
complexity and ensure the usability of its newest application,
Interlude. Interlude is IDM’s next generation for component
manufacturing, labeling, order entry and distribution.
At the core
of Pathfinder’s UXD methodology is the identification of key
user types or personas. Each persona is researched in terms of
his or her goals, physical workspace and application-use
scenarios. Since different personas have different tasks to
perform, the software needs to accommodate different types of
flows.
Flow is the
way the application supports the user’s work task. For instance,
a lab technician needs to have a repeatable and robust process
for manufacturing blood products, such as creating a pool or
performing a conversion. The supervisors and system
administrators, however, need a more flexible scheme to support
investigative tasks. The UXD process at Pathfinder uncovers the
user requirements and prioritizes them into features and flows.
The UXD
process also relies heavily on visualization of the flows and
potential screen designs of the application. Miniature screens
are created and embedded into flow charts to provide a simple
walk-through experience of an idea.
Once the flow
is understood, sequences of “wireframe” screens are created to
provide a representative experience of the major functions of
the application. By providing rapid, simple visualizations of
the experience, it is possible to elicit feedback from users,
developers and stakeholders early in the project. Each group has
valuable input and the UXD process is there to capture it while
the application design can still be changed.
As a result
of the UXD process, several innovations are being integrated
into Interlude. For example, because lab technicians perform a
segment of their work while typically standing a few feet from
the computer using hand scanners, the system will provide
easy-to-understand visual and audio cues indicating success or
problems. These features will make the software a part of the
environment as a whole, and make the experience for the
technician more robust and comfortable.
In addition
to making the lab environment more ergonomic, the software also
exhibits new ways of structuring screens so the analysis and
administration functions are easier to perform. For example,
content-intensive screens are designed to be easily scanned by
the eye, so key information such as test results is presented
using color indicators that enable the user to readily “see”
what they are dealing with.
The end goal
of the UXD process is to design usable software that provides an
innovative, satisfying and engaging work experience for each
user type.
Bob Moll is
the Senior User Experience Architect at Pathfinder Associates in
Chicago, Ill.
www.pathf.com
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System Implementation, No Small
Task |
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Selecting a new software application for your business is
an important decision. The selection process can take on many
phases, including identifying a data-processing need, deciding
on a budget, evaluating product functionality, interviewing
vendors and addressing regulatory needs. Once the decision is
made, implementing the system begins.
System implementation is a daunting task for both the
vendor and the user. Incorporating software into the current
workflow, purchasing and installing hardware, migrating data,
training users, validating the software and updating
procedures are just a sampling of what has to get done.
It is
critical that the vendor of the software is prepared to support
the customer throughout the implementation process. Therefore,
as part of the software evaluation process, one should
thoroughly evaluate the vendor capabilities for supporting the
customer during the implementation phase.
“Vendor support is of the utmost importance during
implementation. The success of your installation is in their
hands because they have the expertise. They know the system a
lot more than you do,” said Rick
Chatelain, laboratory Technical Support manager, The Blood
Center, New Orleans, La.
“A vendor who is organized, knowledgeable and can effectively
communicate with the customer builds a certain level of trust
within that customer. That trust is important, because the
customer has to let go and let the professionals do the job,”
Chatelain said.
IDM has found
that having a dedicated account specialist per customer to
manage all implementation activity has proven to be very
effective.
“The
account specialist is really nice to have. They do a lot of the
hard part before the install – listening to customer needs,
making suggestions on how to configure the system to meet those
needs, communicating those needs to the installation team,
coordinating schedules, etc. They turn what could be potentially
hundreds of phone calls into a handful. They are proactively
finding any problems that, in the past, would have caused stress
for the customer,” Chatelain said.
“Following
Hurricane Katrina, we were all being pulled in different
directions while trying to recover... from trying to contact
missing employees; to recovering equipment, records, and
supplies from our flooded downtown location; to dealing with our
own personal losses. It made it so nice to pick-up the
phone, call
Lisa Sanchez, our account specialist at IDM and say, ‘Lisa,
here’s what we need from you guys. Talk it over and let me know
what needs to be done.’ She called me the next day, told me what
needed to be done, and IDM was on my server that afternoon
getting to work,” Chatelain said.
Additionally, there are many technical tasks and small projects
that need to be completed as part of the implementation. In
response to this need, IDM has recently reorganized to include a
new position, technical consultant. The primary responsibilities
for this person include: hardware and software installations,
performing software upgrades, executing go-live procedures and
resolving complex technical issues. Technical consultants are
the technical resource for the account specialist.
Let’s face
it, most systems that have been 510(k) cleared do what they are
suppose to do. But in the end, outstanding customer
implementation assistance and support will speak for itself.
Anish
Doshi, Manager of Technical Marketing, manages the system
implementation activities at Information Data Management.
add@idm.com.
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2006 IDM Users Conference |
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The 2006 IDM Users Conference will be held on Monday, Aug.
28, and Tuesday, Aug. 29, at the Embassy Suites Hotel in
Rosemont, Ill.
IDM received many wonderful comments and suggestions from
last year's Users Conference and organizers believe everyone
was pleased with the topics that were discussed, said Susan
McBride, vice president of Business Development at IDM.
“As we continue to create innovative solutions to better
meet the needs of our customers, we feel a change is necessary
in the way we host our annual Users Conference,” McBride said.
Over the years, conference organizers have found that many of
the user-attendees are customers of both IDM Surround and IDM
Select Series/Prelude. Therefore, IDM has reorganized the agenda
to provide a Users Conference that everyone will find
informative and useful.
Conference Program Agenda
DAY ONE
A general session with topics of interest to all user-attendees
will be presented. An IDM company update, industry topics and
general technical topics are examples of what will be discussed.
DAY TWO
We will break into the two IDM product groups. These sessions
will be IDM-product focused and will feature product updates,
changes and user topics of interest.
As in the past, we welcome your input, and if there is a
particular topic you feel would be beneficial or if you are
interested in presenting at the conference, please contact Steve
Slaw at 1-800-249-4276 or email sas@idm.com.
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