hmust1

We have Meditech as both the Hospital and Laboratory (including Blood Bank) Information System. I don't have a problem with it...other than I wasn't the one to originally set it up for Blood Bank. Unfortunately, sometimes it's harder to fix problems than just deal with them.

I am just about to role out our validated Echo phenotyping. We ran 20 (mix of POS and NEG) samples for each antigen (C, c, E, e, K). I accomplished this easily by pulling historically neg/pos units that were getting shipped in from our blood supplier, as our shipping reports contain the historical antigen typing info. for each unit.
Something to remember when deciding whether or not to automate a process is to perform an overall value analysis. Not every cost savings measure consists of lowering "direct" costs (as in the amount of money spent on reagents each year). There is a significant time savings brought about by automation and therefore "indirect" costs are saved and that can add up too. For example, even if you might spend slightly more $$ on reagents each year, you might in turn free up several minutes of tech time each day. If this is the case, the time savings might allow your department to absorb higher test volumes without increasing staff...which will in turn have a direct $$ benefit to your facility.