Automation in blood bank processing: where we go? By R. Fernandez, Ll. Puig, P. Ortiz, J. Ovejo, N. Martinez, E. Valdivia & S.G. Gomez.

1. AUTOMATION IN BLOOD BANK PROCESSING: WHERE WE GO?
R. Fernandez, Ll. Puig, P. Ortiz, J. Ovejo, N. Martinez, E. Valdivia & S.G. Gomez
Banc de Sang i Teixits. Barcelona (Spain)
BACKGROUND
Nowadays, blood banking is requiring new strategies to manufacture blood components, due to the increase on their
production. At Banc de Sang i Teixits (BST), we have implemented during the last years automation manufacturing,
including lean management methods, to be able to process our needs of over 250.000 blood donations for an area with
more than 7 million people.
Orbisac
(2005)
Atreus
2C
(2007)
Atreus
3C
(2011)
Reveos
(2013)
METHOD
BST has been implementing different equipment (Fig. 1) and final products
were different:
-Orbisac (2005): buffy coat and platelet concentrate.
-Atreus 2C and Atreus 3C (2007 & 2011): red blood cells, buffy coat and fresh
frozen plasma.
-Reveos (2013): red cell concentrate, plasma, platelets and leukocyte residue.
In 2009, an engineer was incorporated in the team for implementing Lean
Manufacturing thinking. Briefly, lean thinking major value is to eliminate all
waste processes and chose all these activities that add value to the procedure
(Fig. 2). Figure 1. Banc de Sang i Teixits cronogram
Figure 2. Lean Thinking principles
RESULTS
During the period when the different equipment was changed
and implemented, hemoglobin content per red blood cell unit
increased from 52.2 g to 56.0 g. Platelet content in the
average pool unit increased from 2.5 x1011, to 3.1 x 1011,
with four or five IPU units (table I).
Automation had am impact on staff and how it was
organized. The staff working hours to obtain blood
components decreased from 25.7 to 17.8 per 100 whole
blood units (table II).
The attrition rate for RBCs decreased from 1.11% (2008) to
0.81% (2016). Regarding platelets, attrition rate also
decreased (table III).
CONCLUSIONS
It’s obvious that automation in blood banking makes more efficient the manufacturing of blood components, getting
better quality of them. We encourage maintaining lean philosophy in order to keep improving our methods and
identifying those activities that add value to our process. In a globalized and industrialized world, where everything
changes very fast, these improvements are necessary to be on top of the field and be a state of the art blood bank.
Table I. Evolution of blood components
Table II. Evolution of staff needs (in hours)
Table III. Attrition rates