McKesson

[Rosemary]

Hi All

We are updating our LIMS and have had a demo from McKesson of their Horizon Lab product. As they don't have an Australian presence does anyone out there have experience with their product to give me some feedback re- the blood banking module? - good & bad points, experience with the implementation,analyser interfacing, post go-live vendor support.

Thanks

[David Saikin]

I am going live soon with McKesson . . . looked at their BB product (Horizon) which is actually Wyndgate's "SafeTrace". It is a good system but I feel they charge too much for it. It is also an "add on" to Paragon, not actually a part of the system. There are less expensive, just as good systems which will interface with Paragon (I am hopefully getting HCLL to go with mine). The only advantage to Horizon is that the McKesson folks are used to dealing with it.

[SRice]

I am an end-user for the HBB/HLAB system. We went live 1/31/2010. Prior to this we were on Cerner Classic, which is a mnenomic based system, HBB was a HUGE UPGRADE to that since it is windows based. The interface with HLAB is a little tricky and somewhat cumbersome. It would be nice to be on one platform, but that being said, HBB has many good features that we like. We were able to implement the electronic crossmatch, it has a good system for checking for duplicate patients, the inventory system is very easy to use. There are many good checks and balances for patient safety including matching the product tag attached to the unit to the patient at the time of issue, the Patient-At-A-Glance bar that displays the patient's comments, special needs, antibodies, transfusion reactions, all transfused units, accessories, and derrivatives. Hope this helps.

[Rosemary]

Thanks for the feedback David & SRice.