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A new Web-based organ donor registry has been set up in the US to help ensure that donated organs are quickly matched with the patients waiting for them.
The Living Bank is a Houston-based non-profit group whose remit is to encourage people to become organ and tissue donors. The group said this week that it had named Compaq as its vendor of choice to enhance its national donor registry operations, and to enable organ procurement organisations and tissue/eye banks to access The Living Bank's donor database on-line.
The organisation hopes that its new on-line registry, which is one of the first of its type, will encourage more people to donate organs and speed-up the organ donation and procurement process.
According to Jon Eiche, president and chief executive officer of The Living Bank, the registry is accessible from any computer with Internet capability and proper security authorisation.
"Organ procurement organisations and tissue and eye banks that conduct recovery of organs and tissues are being assigned a secure password for access to the database," said Eiche in a statement. "Ease of navigation is a mainstay of the database, and with only a few keystrokes, a procurement co-ordinator can determine if his or her patient is registered."
Eiche added that the registry will also provide organ procurement organisations in the US with an efficient way to download scanned registration forms signed by the donor that can be shown to the next of kin.
"So far, we have assigned about 60 log-on IDs and passwords to organ procurement organisations and we anticipate the number to grow rapidly as awareness of the new Internet-based registry increases," said Aqeel Rizvi, vice-president of Compliance Development Corporation, a Houston-based IT consulting practice that worked with The Living Bank to help implement the registry.
Once the organ procurement organisation has its login ID and password, its administrator can authorise other users within its organisation. According to The Living Bank, this streamlines the administrative process by providing "around-the-clock" access to donor records by authorised personnel without having to call to check donor records or record staff changes that occur at the procurement organisations.
"Last year alone there was an estimated 20,000 potential donors, but less than 6,000 actual organ donations," said Eiche. "We hope the technology enhancements will increase the number of donors who can actually carry out their wishes."
Currently the new on-line registry has around 1.2 million donors in its database and The Living Bank said that it expects another 400,000 names to be added shortly.
For further information, visit http://www.livingbank.org.
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