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We have had SCC Softbank as our Blood Bank system since 2008. Our lab was on Sunquest lab until March 2015 when our facility implemented Epic and the Lab went on Epic's Beaker. I was very heavily involved with the Epic/Beaker/Soft implementation. We brought up new inbound (ADT/Orders) and outbound (Results and Billing) interfaces. We were also one of the first sites to go live with Epic's BPAM (Blood Product Administration Module). Soft was able to send the required result components necessary for BPAM to work. The only thing missing is the product expiration, which has to be scanned at the time of transfusion. We have always been very happy with Softbank and the features it offers. It is very user friendly. I have staff who have formerly worked with Sunquest, HCLL, and Meditech and they have all said that Softbank is by far the easiest to learn. Implementation support has been great. I found that Epic was not very flexible in their interfacing and expected Soft to make changes to accommodate Epic workflow. Soft always managed to come up with a solution that worked for us. Blood Bank tests are processed through Beaker. We were able to have the Beaker labels for Blood Bank specimens configured so that the specimen ID number can be used on our Blood Bank instruments. Soft files this number as an "Auxiliary Order Number" so there is no need for relabeling. The billing has been flawless from the start. We do have SoftLab which sort of runs in the background and there is setup that has to be done in SoftLab as well as SoftBank. Most of the reporting as well as billing are done by Softlab and it is Softlab that interfaces directly with Epic. We have found ongoing technical support to be very good. In August 2015, we brought two affiliate hospitals (formerly Meditech sites) up on Epic/Beaker/Soft. Soft was very supportive in assisting us with the multisite build since this was our first experience with a multisite environment. The next hospital should be easier! I would not hesitate to recommend Soft. No matter what Blood Bank system you select I strongly suggest you have a Blood Bank person involved in the Beaker build, or at least present during discussions. I did not have Beaker training but I have been told that during the training out at Epic there was little to no mention of Blood Bank. If you have non Blood Bankers building Beaker, they may make decisions that will cause you problems down the road...like being able to add lab tests on to a Blood Bank sample. Another suggestion is to be sure to be involved in the build decisions and test blood product orders with every Beaker module. My experience was each group tended to do their build in a vacuum, despite trying to get them to attend unified blood workgroup meetings.

Our Vision is to be installed tomorrow (May 24). One tech goes to training on June 13. The inhouse training starts June 20. We have Cerner Milennium, but will also be using middleware (DataInnovations.)

From experience let me tell you that staffing is much more of a justification for automation than numbers of tests. A small rural hospital that is staffed with only one or two techs at a given time would find automation invaluable regardless of the number of type and screens they perform. Automation can literally be life saving under short staffing situations and I'm referring to patient lives not staff!

At this time you can't put partially used cards back on the Vision. This is something to consider if you are a smaller/med size hospital or if you are planning to use Poly IgG/C3 cards for DATs. They are willing to give customers a credit for unused wells, so don't let that stop you from making a decision about using (or not using) the Vision for a specific card/test. We are told that you will be able to put partially used cards back on the analyzer with the next software upgrade, so time is TBA. There is also supposed to be a change in how long partially used cards can stay on the machine until they are "kicked off" - right now it is only 4 hours. We are still validating, it has taken some time to get this set up for pediatrics and get the interface going with Sunquest. Stephanie

First, thank you. You made my day! Maybe you could look at that cumbersome "read back" system and possibly make it less cumbersome. With out seeing your system in operation I really can not make any suggestions but my experience has been that any system described as cumbersome is in desperate need of retooling. Secondly, how often are they actually hanging more than 2 units at once! This should not really be an issue. Our system was capable of transporting 4 PRBCs at one time but we didn't tell anyone that and maintained a fairly hard and fast rule of no more than 2. We were a level II trauma center and 2 units at a time never posed a problem. The biggest problem we had was having some one in OR waiting to remove the blood from the tube system. And finally, can you define the distance to surgery from the blood bank in increments of time? When we were validating the tube system in the new hospital in 2002 the time from pushing the send button to arrival at the most distant station was measured in seconds! My guess is that the time concern of the surgeons has more to do with the cumbersome read back system and not the actual transit time. Our tube system had the ability to set priorities and the blood bank had the highest priority in the facility. When we pushed the send button everything else got out of the way.

I would recommend Helmer as well. They also have an option for a monitoring system to help you get away from the paper charts.