Whole blood donations that enter the production
line as full blood bags are hung and allowed to filter to remove the white blood cells. The blood is then separated into plasma and red blood cells, and platelets are removed and stored separately. These product packs are labelled with a unique barcode. Red blood cells can be used to treat severe anaemia or bleeding, while platelets can be used to support the treatment of patients with cancer; platelets allow blood to clot and need to be agitated or moved constantly to stop them aggregating. NHSBT Filton has its own logistics department,
with a fleet of temperature-controlled vans that move the products to eight warehouses across England. In the same way that trays of platelet product are “agitated” in the Filton centre, the platelets are kept moving constantly by the motion of the van. Some of the most valuable, life-saving products
created by NHSBT Filton include blood from umbilical cords, which contain the stem cells from which life itself begins. Cord blood can be used to treat more than 80 diseases, including blood cancers like leukaemia and lymphoma. NHSBT’s Cord Blood Bank was established in 1996 and currently holds around 20,000 donations. A public facility, it is the fourth largest internationally accredited cord blood bank in the world with the second highest percentage of rare tissue types. October 2014 saw NHSBT achieve a landmark, the issue of its 500th Cord Blood Donation, and the introduction of a new typing system that will allow patients in need of a stem cell transplant to find a match more easily. The NHSBT Cord Blood Bank was the first in the world to embark on this exciting new system. The sheer size of NHSBT’s Filton facility and
the scale of what they achieve there is incredible to witness - over 40% of the blood products used by hospitals in England and North Wales are issued from this centre. NHSBT Filton has tangible expertise in the management of the blood supply chain – the way in which these life-saving products are processed in vast batches to ensure the needs of one of the world’s largest publicly-funded health services, the NHS, are met. From donor to manufacturing centre and testing,
and then on to the hospitals where lives are saved - the blood makes a truly remarkable journey, starting with the donors who visit NHSBT’s fixed and mobile blood donation units.
Marketing the need for donors NHSBT is one of four UK blood services and all of them are largely self-sufficient in blood products, although plasma for fractionation has been imported into the UK since 1998 to minimise any risk of variant CJD transmission. Further safety developments over the next few years might mean that surplus plasma, if tested rigorously to the quality standards required, could be exported to global plasma fractionators.
110 Global Opportunity Healthcare 2015 | Issue 01
global-opportunity.co.uk
Special Health Authority PHOTO: SWNS GROUP
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NHSBT Filton
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