National Blood Authority looks to cloud to stem blood wastage

The National Blood Authority has deployed an enterprise cloud platform from Nutanix to help cut down on blood wastage by improving efficiency.

Adopting a cloud platform has helped the statutory agency cut down on $10 million in blood wastage, the equivalent of 20,000 extra blood donations every year.

The NBA achieved this by replacing its traditional storage area network with the Nutanix enterprise cloud platform.

The new system was designed and installed by Canberra ICT services provider Qirx to support a virtual desktop infrastructure running essential blood management and patient registry systems.

NBA employees can now log on to the agency’s systems from anywhere, including in laboratories and at remote clinics.

NBA CIO Peter O’Halloran said prior to deploying the cloud platform, clinical and scientific staff had been forced to spend hours, and in some cases weeks, preparing for out-of-office trips, by which time the required data was out of date.

“We needed a way to give staff the most up-to-date information at all times, whether they’re accessing our main blood management system named BloodNet, the Australian Bleeding Disorders Registry or any other application,” he said.

He said that using the platform is allowing staff to save an average of 34 minutes per week in login times alone, resulting in significant cost savings. The implementation achieved an ROI within five months of operation.

Image courtesy of Antonio under CC