Mediware Announces First Customer for BloodSafe
Mediware Announces First Customer for BloodSafe™ Shands at the Universityof Florida adopts new Mediware product to streamline efficiency, reduce waste and improve patient safety
LENEXA KS, August 11, 2008 - Mediware Information Systems (NASD: MEDW), a provider of ClosedLoop™ clinical systems for blood and medication management, announced today that Shands at UF academic medical center, a designated Magnet facility in Gainesville, has licensed and will implement Mediware’s new BloodSafeTM system. BloodSafe is one of the latest components in the Company’s suite of patient safety enabling tools. Comprised of a combination of hardware and software, BloodSafe creates an intelligent, remote release solution for hospital blood banks. Mediware introduced plans for the product last year and has been actively marketing BloodSafe since February.
“We were very impressed with the potential Mediware’s BloodSafe offers,” said Dr. Tisha Netzel, UF pathologist and Shands at UF’s transfusion services medical director. “We believe it will reduce our costs, support our facility’s patient safety objectives and be a tremendous asset to staff throughout the hospital.”
“We feel fortunate that our first BloodSafe customer is a facility of such prestige,” said Kelly Mann, Mediware’s president and chief executive officer. “Shands at UF’s adoption of this new technology will add tremendous credibility to a product that is clearly one of our strategic growth initiatives.”
Mediware’s BloodSafe enables blood banks to securely store blood in high need areas of the hospital and allows staff to quickly access the exact amount and type of blood needed for a given patient. The BloodSafe solution includes software to manage the clinical and patient data, vending machine styled refrigerators that dispense the blood, and electronic locks for securing standard blood refrigerators.
“Our team is always looking for ways to streamline our processes in a way that supports our commitment to patient safety,” said Dr. Netzel. “My team supports over 500 physicians and transfuses 62,500 blood products. This includes 23 operating rooms and four ICUs. For an institution of our size, with an annual blood budget of over $8M., even small improvements in efficiency, safety and savings can have a huge impact.”
Blood is typically ordered, delivered and returned from a central blood bank, a process that can take an hour or longer depending on the tests required and distance between the patient and the blood bank. With BloodSafe, orders can be initiated from the closest BloodSafe refrigerator and the blood available in 60 seconds.
This capability is expected to have an even greater impact at Shands at UF as the hospital will soon be opening a new facility that will increase the distance between the blood bank and the areas of highest use.
In addition to the efficiency gains, BloodSafe supports Shands at UF’s patient safety objectives through robust clinical checks and two unique patient identifiers to ensure that the right patients get the right blood. Using two dimensional barcodes, BloodSafe monitors which units are checked out from the refrigerators, ensures that the blood meets the patient requirements, and captures transfusion statistics for the patient’s central health record.
The close proximity of the BloodSafe to the area of use means that the staff is more likely to only check out what is needed and return unused blood within the time limits allowed. The result is a ClosedLoop environment that improves inventory management and reduces waste.
More information about BloodSafe is available on Mediware’s web site, www.mediware.com.
About Shands HealthCare
Shands HealthCare is a private, not-for-profit healthcare system affiliated with the University of Florida and its Health Science Center campuses in Gainesville and Jacksonville. The system includes eight Shands hospitals and two home-health agencies. Shands is affiliated with more than 80 UF outpatient practices located throughout North Central and Northeast Florida.
The Shands at UF academic medical center is located in Gainesville. Approximately 550 UF faculty physicians practice at the hospital in more than 100 areas of specialty care, from primary care to highly complex care including cancer, cardiovascular, neurosurgery and transplantation services. Each year, patients come to Shands at UF from every county in the state, throughout the nation and more than a dozen countries. The hospital consistently ranks as a U.S. News & World Report Best Hospital.
About Mediware
Mediware delivers blood and medication management software systems that encapsulate information supporting patient therapies, reinforce patient safety practices and improve efficiencies to lower costs. Mediware’s customers include prestigious hospitals, clinics, correctional institutions, blood centers and other public and private health care institutions throughout the world. For more information about Mediware products and services, visit www.mediware.com.
