Recently, I was handed an article "Minnesota hospitals report errors in hopes of learning from mistakes" published by the Star Tribute of Minneapolis. The article covers an ongoing push by hospitals to increase patient safety by decreasing hospital errors. Easily avoidable mistakes can and have caused significant damage for both hospitals and patients alike. Within the article Carolyn Wilson, co-president of University of Minnesota Health and chief operating officer of Fairview Health states that she would like to see a system in which Specimens are barcoded at the hospital and confirmed to be delivered to the lab.
Here at Fortelinea, we have created a system to fix this very issue. Prima, our flagship suite of barcoding and tracking applications starts in operating room (either in a desktop or web based module) and allows the surgeon or assistant to create barcodes for their specimens on demand. Once the specimen barcode has been printed Prima tracks the specimen, cassettes and slides from the operating room, to the lab, pathologists desk, and into archiving. Prima also provides notifications if a specimen, cassette or slide, does not arrive in an appropriate amount of time.
