Robots Carry Weight - and Blood Components - at Centers

By Elissa Fuchs, AABB Staff Writer

Tug makes his way across the halls of the University of California-San Francisco Hospital easily, transporting blood for transfusions. He quickly goes up and down elevators and through doorways with his products safely guarded. When he reaches his destination, he drops off the contents and heads back to the laboratory to wait for his next assignment…Tug is not your traditional blood banking employee. For one, he is not exactly a person. He is actually a member of the robot species.

“The robot fills in the gaps at our center because we have a very busy service and don’t have pneumatic tubes to all locations” Delene Johnson, former BCP employee and current Transfusion Service Supervisor at UCSF, said. “It takes the burden off our staff, especially at night and on the weekends, when there are not as many employees here.”...

At Johnson’s facility, the laboratory staff load Tug with blood products, select a preprogrammed destination on a computer touch screen, and press the robot’s green “go” button. Just like that, the machine is on its way to a medical wing of the hospital. When it reaches its destination, the robot verbally announces its arrival, at which point personnel must enter an electronic code to unlock the cart cabinet and access the contents. As with accepting components from a human deliverer, staffers must sign to confirm the blood products were received; the robot then returns the signed document to the laboratory…

Even though each robot came with a $25,000 price tag, Gifford Lum, MD, the blood bank director at the Boston VA, insisted that they are very cost-effective, saving the facility money on personnel time. Lum and San Francisco’s Johnson agree that the robots are easy to use, and Lum is encouraging health care workers in nearby facilities to adopt this product.

“We’ve really had a good experience with the robots,” he said. “They never tire or call in sick.”

Robots’ Other Applications

Facilities are branching out and using robots for other aspects of blood banking and transfusion medicine besides carrying components. In Korea, for example, scientists at the Pohang University of Science and Technology developed a robot that could perform almost 100 different types of tests on blood. In the U.K., a robot known as the “Bloodbot” has been designed to draw blood samples from humans, although it is still in the experimental stages.

Three robots are being used to sort blood samples at the Red Cross Plasma Sample Management Facility in Birmingham, Alabama…

“Using a robot has definite advantages. Its benefits include reducing human handling of potentially hazardous specimens, improving productivity and eliminating mistakes,” said Cynthia McCrorie, director of plasma sample management at the Red Cross. “It takes the human error part out of the equation. The repetitive nature of manual sorting would be pretty overwhelming for a person.”

This article was excerpted from AABB News.

Image from Boxed Thrills.

Every Time a Bell Rings

by Ashley Messick, Social Media Specialist, hot chocolate connoisseur, and holiday movie lover

I still remember watching It’s A Wonderful Life every holiday season as a kid. It’s surprising that an old black and white movie, with actors rather than cartoon characters and a storyline a little older than my years, held my attention each year. For awhile we could watch only when it came on tv and then I remember my dad getting the movie one year so we could pop it in whenever we liked. It’s funny though that even though we had that movie all year round, it was only around the holidays that we would crowd onto the couch to see George Bailey relive the same lesson as he did the year before.

For many, the most memorable quote of It’s A Wonderful Life is during the scene at the very end, when George scoops up little Zuzu and upon hearing the ringing of a bell she says:

Teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.

It’s the happy ending that leaves us feeling joyful and restores our faith in mankind and in ourselves. I’ll be honest though, the scene that always sticks in my mind the most is more serious:

[George has discovered his brother Harry’s tombstone]
Clarence: [ explaining] Your brother, Harry Bailey, broke through the ice and was drowned at the age of nine.
George Bailey: That’s a lie! Harry Bailey went to war - he got the Congressional Medal of Honor, he saved the lives of every man on that transport.
Clarence: Every man on that transport died! Harry wasn’t there to save them, because you weren’t there to save Harry.

The message of It’s A Wonderful Life is this: we often forget the impact that our lives have on others. This holiday season I’m really not sure what more direct appeal for blood donation we can have than that exact message. Your life-saving gift will forever change someone else’s life. In turn, who knows what they may do for the world.

So from all of us at Blood Centers of the Pacific: Happy Holidays and thank you for the gift you give by being a blood donor.