Other Blood Safety Measures

Conventional safety measures rely on adding new screening and testing methods as new threats emerge, entering a cycle of ever-increasing production costs. On the other hand, effective pathogen inactivation with INTERCEPT™ stops this cycle and can lead to cost savings through the removal of redundant safety measures.

The adoption of the INTERCEPT Blood System will offer blood centres new ways to optimise their processes. INTERCEPT provides cost saving opportunities at each step from donor to patient:

• Full pathogen inactivation cover may allow donor centres to relax certain deferral rules, enlarging their donor pool.
• Offers the possibility to use plasma from local donors exclusively, which increases control over the quality and origin of the plasma product.
• Optimisation of the blood collection mix.
• Under a full pathogen inactivation cover, blood centres can become independent of several current testing and processing procedures.
• Production of multiple therapeutic doses from a single INTERCEPT processing set.
• Reduction of platelet wastage by allowing early release and seven-day shelf life.
• Reduction of acute transfusion reactions.^1,2

The INTERCEPT Blood System has been shown to offset costs by streamlining operations and provides significant clinical benefits via proactive reduction of transfusion-transmitted infections, at a minimal investment.

Sources:

1. Notification by the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (PEI) to German blood centres on deffering donors who travelled to endemic areas of WNV except if pathogen inactivation is in place

2. Sweeney J, & Miguel L., Platelet Transfusion Therapy (2013), AABB Press, Bethesda