Just under four years ago, the EU Blood Safety directive was transposed into UK law through the Blood Safety and Quality Regulations 2005. These imposed significant new burdens on blood banks and hospitals, which were required to set up a fully auditable system for tracing blood from donor to recipient.

Compliance with the regulations is compulsory and monitored by the Medical Healthcare products Regulatory Authority. Non-compliance could result in a prison spell for hospital chief executives. Yet many smaller hospitals have struggled to meet the new requirements and installed manual systems to do so.

A few hospitals, led by the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, have shown what can be done with IT. As Professor Mike Murphy explains, from 2001 to 2007, his trust implemented an end-to-end blood tracking system, using iSOFT and Olympus technologies.

This has not only made transfusion safer but faster, more efficient and cheaper as well. New features have since been developed and are being incorporated into iSOFT's iLaboratory TP, making them available to all its users.