ANSI Highlights Standards' Role in Safe Blood Donations
ANSI has highlighted three standards relevant to national blood donor month and the American Red Cross's emergency call for blood and platelet donations due to a severe winter blood shortage.
Citing the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute, an ANSI-accredited standards-developing organization that has published standards for blood collection and laboratory testing, the American National Standards Institute noted this week that it is national blood donor month and the American Red Cross has issued an emergency call for blood and platelet donations due to a severe winter blood shortage.
ANSI explained that the CLSI GP44-A4 standard, Procedures for the Handling and Processing of Blood Specimens for Common Laboratory Tests; Approved Guideline - Fourth Edition, addresses handling and processing of blood specimens for examination procedures using serum, plasma, or whole blood in the clinical laboratory and specifies criteria to assist the lab and other health care providers in recognizing, reducing, or eliminating pre-examination errors resulting from improper handling of blood specimens.
Another relevant standard developed by accredited standards developer AAMI, the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, is American National Standard ANSI/AAMI BF64:2012, Leukocyte Reduction Filters, which contains labeling requirements, performance requirements, test methods, and terminology for disposable filters used for the reduction of leukocytes from blood or blood products during transfusion.
A third example is ISO 1135-3:2016, Transfusion equipment for medical use -- Part 3: Blood-taking set for single use, which offers guidance for transfusion equipment for a single use and for a single donor. It was developed by the International Organization for Standardization's Technical Committee (TC) 76, Transfusion, infusion and injection equipment for medical and pharmaceutical use, Working Group 5, Blood collection systems.