Vein-to-Vein Tracking of Blood Products

Reducing medical errors and enhancing the safety and quality of healthcare delivery is widely recognized as a national priority. In this regard, enabling error-free delivery of blood products is a key component of enhancing overall healthcare safety. While the general public associates blood transfusion risk with exposure to infectious hazards, mis-transfusion (mismatch between patient and blood) is the most prevelant serious hazard of transfusion.

The Transfusion Medicine RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Consortium is actively engaged in the first-ever comprehensive investigation to research, develop and introduce innovative application of RFID for automatic identification, tracking and status-monitoring of blood and blood products across all entities in the supply chain – from the point of collection, through blood product manufacturing and distribution, to delivery of a product by a healthcare provider to a patient. The goal is to develop an innovative RFID-enabled blood product tracking solution (to complement barcoding) that will overcome associated technical and policy environment challenges and complement good manufacturing practices using a quality systems approach.

Click on the sections below to learn more about the Study Objectives, Guiding Principles, and Approach followed by our study team, and explore the various sections of the website to gain a better understanding of how High-Frequency RFID technology can help overcome a number of common challenges and process inefficiencies associated with identification and tracking of blood products from vein-vein.