Improved Processes and Cost Savings through Industry Innovation in Blood Banking

Leading the way is Braintree, Mass.-based Haemonetics Corp. At the J.P. Morgan healthcare analyst meeting, held in San Francisco, Calif., Haemonetics President Brian Concannon presented the company’s strategic goals to improve outcomes and help lower costs in the blood management business.

A core part of the firm’s strategy addresses inefficiencies in the whole-blood collection (WBC) process. Haemonetics has become a leader in this market by addressing the plasma supply market. The company has grown to a reported 70 percent market share by streamlining the commercial plasma supply chain, driving cost efficiencies that improve yields and lower the cost per unit collected.

Haemonetics’ next growth target is the WBC process. The company reports that of the 60 million red blood cell units collected annually, 58 million (97 percent) are manual collections. This inefficient system is difficult to implement in remote locations (disasters, war zones), has a lengthy and cumbersome donation process, uses limited automation, and requires manual keying of collection data.

In response, Haemonetics is transforming the manually-intensive WBC process through its Arm-to-Arm Solution, a process in development to streamline and automate the entire blood management system, from donor blood collection to delivery to the patient. This will be accomplished with a wireless data automation package, a novel storage system and an automated WBC collector, all planned for launch between 2013 and 2015. Blood centers will benefit from this new technology by improving donor retention, lowering costs, gaining higher yields, increasing efficiency and improving blood collection worker compliance.