This is a companion article to the feature, “Building a Safer Blood Supply.”
“Traditionally, blood banks and other clinical laboratories have been somewhat separate, as blood banks were considered very specialized. A lot of technologists had a fear of working in the blood bank,” says Eva Quinley, MS, MT(ASCP), SBB, chief operating officer of Medic Regional Blood Center, Knoxville, Tenn, and executive director of LifeSource/ITxM, Chicago. “Today, however, economics have impelled healthcare organizations to have more cross-trained staff. So it is no longer uncommon to see laboratory technologists working in the blood bank and one or more other labs.”
“Hospital blood banks are a key piece of the clinical laboratory,” agrees Steven H. Kleinman, MD, senior medical advisor to the American Association of Blood Banks and clinical professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. “Ongoing interaction with the lab, as well as with the clinical service lines in other departments, is key.”
“In some blood banks, the clinical laboratory performs certain tests for the blood center—such as infectious disease testing,” says Quinley. “However, most infectious disease testing for blood banks still takes place in large testing labs that only do testing.”
“In order to communicate effectively, blood banks and clinical labs need better technology that allows for seamless communication between the two entities,” says Heidi Casaletto, vice president of transfusion medicine at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics. “We are seeing improvement in this area already. In the UK, for example, many hospitals can now go directly into a blood bank database and search for the blood supplies they need. We are committed to continuing the progress in this area, and expect to see other regions adopting this integrated technology in the near future.”