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Blood Components
Patient Services
The year saw a number of changes in our processing and
testing activities which helped to streamline the blood
supply chain and improve the service we offered to
hospitals, as well as ensuring the blood was as safe as
possible.
We continued to increase processing and
testing productivity with growth of more than 50% over
the last three years. Throughout the year we showed how
much we value each and every donation by reporting the
lowest ever combined processing and testing losses,
including a 16% reduction in testing losses from the
previous year. All of this activity has and will make a
significant improvement to operational efficiency, as
well as supporting our strategy to maintain the price of
red cells to customers.
In 2010/11
Filton
Filton is a world class facility manufacturing over 600,000 units of donated blood every year for use in hospitals across the Midlands and the South-West.
It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week and uses cutting-edge technology in blood filtration, conveyor and storage systems.
The £60 m building, which houses 550 staff, is also home to the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory, the NHS Cord Blood Bank and the British Bone Marrow Registry.
The cord bank and bone marrow registry are linked to similar registries across the world and are used to help identify stem cell matches for transplant for patients who are seriously ill with diseases such as leukaemia.
Filton is a world class facility manufacturing over 600,000 units of donated blood every year for use in hospitals across the Midlands and the South-West.
It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week and uses cutting-edge technology in blood filtration, conveyor and storage systems.
The £60 m building, which houses 550 staff, is also home to the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory, the NHS Cord Blood Bank and the British Bone Marrow Registry.
The cord bank and bone marrow registry are linked to similar registries across the world and are used to help identify stem cell matches for transplant for patients who are seriously ill with diseases such as leukaemia.
In 2010/11
- We maintained strong blood stock levels and further increased blood productivity with 22% growth in the past three years.
- We improved security of the blood supply, reducing the number of days when stock levels fell below acceptable levels from 87 in 2007/08 to only two days in 2010/11.
- Our Operational Improvement Programme (OIP) continued to increase blood testing and manufacturing productivity.
- We completed consolidation of our processing work from Brentwood into our centres in Filton and Colindale.
- We consolidated blood processing activity from Leeds to Newcastle and Sheffield.
- We announced our plans to explore the transferral of donation testing activity to Manchester from our centres in Newcastle and Sheffield.
- We started working with hospitals on a trial integrated transfusion service designed to help improve service.
- We introduced bacterial screening of platelets to further improve product safety.
- We have imported single donor plasma from the US since 2003 to treat neonates and children as part of a vCJD risk reduction strategy. We added further countries considered low risk
for vCJD to our potential plasma suppliers list
following a safety review by the Committee for the
Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (SaBTO), and awarded
the contract to the Austrian Blood Service in 2010. The
transition to the new supplier was completed in October
2010.
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