The following e-mail will be sent on your behalf.

 has sent the following story to you from ElectricNews.net.

The story is available from https://electricnews.net/news.html?code=6825618

Group gives on-line access to organ bank
Thursday, March 28 2002
by Andrew McLindon


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 HREF="http://www.livingbank.org">http://www.livingbank.org.