Human Specimen Procurement Service (HSPS) at St. Joseph’s Hospital & Medical Center

The Challenge

In 2004, after 4 years of success with RDAC (see RDAC study), St. Joseph’s Hospital embarked on an ambitious project to move beyond simply storing digital information in databases. It proposed to leap out computer into real life and to begin storing human tissue information in tissue banks. The Human Specimen Procurement Service would acquire tissue samples during surgical procedures and link these (real life) tissue data to the corresponding textual digital data in RDAC; in simpler terms HSPS would link tissue banks with data banks. Given the sensitivities surrounding human tissue samples, tissue tracking was a pivotal challenge.

Our solution

Late in 2004, Emerge.MD was approached to design a solution to address the needs of HSPS. Realizing that the principle problem centered primarily about “tissue tracking” from the patient source in the operating room through to its final storage, such as in a nitrogen freezer, we proposed a model akin to package delivery tracking. We designed a barcode based wireless application running on an IPAQ handheld utilizing asynchronous message queuing to track tissue samples. The tracking information was then bound to the textual data in RDAC pertaining to the source patient. Asynchronous message queuing was employed since not all areas of the hospital had wireless access points. Message queuing allowed both on-line and near-line tissue tracking irrespective of the availability of a wireless connectivity. Our solution is currently in alpha testing and has passed all initial trials.