Horizon Blood Bank

[TOBYCAT]

Currently we are using the Hemicare Blood Bank System but will be changing to the Horizon System/McKesson any suggestions on how to handle the training of the Technoligist and what kind of training was provided by Horizon, and whats the best way to go concerning the validation process.

[JERSEY]

Our Site has been looking at BB systems as well as the LIS. At the moment we are considering 3. SCC Soft BB, McKesson Wyndate and Misys. Can any former or current users tell me how the install, conversion and stability of the product and support has been? Was the vendor "true" and did not provide vaporware? How much customization did you have to do because the product did not met your needs " out of the box".?

What concerns me is everyone can do a terrific demo and have a "show case site". I am new to the forum and hoping the users will speak the truth. No systems is perfect and we do have our favorites! I won't say what our current system is but I have only had to make 1 crystal report for the blood bank. ( the standard reports for BB are fantastic )

thank you in advance

Jersey!

[bmarotto]

We have had Misys as our LIS since the mid 80's and for BB since 1990. We have not been happy with the BB and hoped their new GUI version would resolve most of our concerns. It took them a long time to get it out; release was delayed several times. We got it in our test area last October and after several months we had them take it out. Not only were highly ranked enhancement requests that were submitted by clients as far back as 2000 not included in the upgrade, but the GUI version had a whole new set of issues for us. I am now hearing complaints from clients that have gone live that units get "locked up", especially when doing many units at once. There has been a Product Safety Notice involving blood types being filed under the wrong patient (they issued a patch for this one). When crossmatching multiple units, there is an issue with the crossmatch grid not lining up with the unit being crossmatched. Handling of QA errors is cumbersome. Electronic XM does not work as it should (if you have a massive transfusion situation and want to issue Rh pos blood to an Rh neg recipient, Misys will not allow an electronic xm). They are 2-3 versions away from being able to print ISBT-128 product labels as components are prepared/modified. On a positive note, Misys does have a lot of BB reports for extracting data and their BB support staff seem to know the system.

We have looked at SCC, Horizon (Wyndgate), and HCLL. Putting the issues mentioned above aside, all three vendors have numerous features in common that Misys lacks. One of the biggest is that patient data is automatically written to a PC and readily available during downtimes. I made a chart listing these features. If anyone would like a copy, I think if you click on my username you will have the option to e-mail me. I can not post my e-mail address within a message.

We are now struggling with the issue of whether switching to a BB system that offers us better functionality outweighs having to maintain an LIS as well as a BB system.

I would also be interested in hearing honest opinions from users of any of these systems.