Rock River Valley Blood Center Contracts for Talisman’s Quality Donor System

VIENNA, Va., Aug. 21 /PRNewswire/ — Talisman Ltd., the biomedical research group and developer of the Quality Donor System (TM) (QDS) is pleased to announce that Rock River Valley Blood Center in Rockford, IL has implemented QDS, and will be implementing over the next year Internet QDS (iQDS) and the Talisman Phlebotomy System (TM) (TPS).

Rock River Valley Blood Center (RRVBC) was founded in 1952 by the Winnebago County Medical Society. It is a not-for-profit organization headquartered in Rockford IL that employs over 100 staff and collects more than 40,000 donations per year. RRVBC supplies blood and blood components to 8 area hospitals in Northern Illinois, and Southern Wisconsin and is accredited by the AABB and a member of America’s Blood Centers.

QDS automates the gap between donor registration and the processing and testing of blood. It utilizes state-of-the-art audiovisual touch screen computer assisted donor self interviewing with the AABB Uniform Donor History Questionnaire and provides staff review with AABB and custom materials. QDS includes standardized but modifiable staff comments, vital signs data and donor and staff signature capture. iQDS allows blood donors to respond to the health history questions online in the privacy and convenience of their home or office. TPS is operated by phlebotomists using wireless hand-held computers to capture vital blood draw information such as start and stop times.

QDS is available in English and Spanish. The system runs in network and standalone modes, can export data, requires only a US Food & Drug Administration CBE-30 notification and no donor training, necessitates only two to three hours of staff training, and can be updated by Talisman with new FDA required questions in less than one week.

Six community blood centers and two medical centers with blood programs currently use QDS. To date, these centers have successfully completed more than 1,250,000 donor self-interviews using QDS. Earlier versions of the Talisman system have been scientifically proven to reduce FDA reportable errors by over 60%, improve reporting of risky donor behavior by a factor of 9, reduce staff time by 5 minutes per donor and vastly increase donor and staff satisfaction. The version of QDS currently being installed is expected to reduce FDA reportable errors by over 90%. The most recently FDA 510(k) cleared version of QDS is expected to reduce errors still further and improve donor and sponsor satisfaction through use of the Internet interview.

Talisman Limited specializes in development of software systems that automate interviewing and thereby reduces or eliminates human errors in healthcare operations. Over the last 10 years the company has pioneered the use of automated donor health history screening for blood centers, with much of its recent product development and scientific research funded by National Heart Lung Blood Institute (NHLBI) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants titled “Paperless Quality Donor System(TM) with Decision Making” (HL072635). Additional information is available at http://www.talismanlimited.com/ .

Talisman Ltd.

CONTACT: Paul D. Cumming, Ph.D., of Talisman Ltd., +1-703-938-0300,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.talismanlimited.com/