Supply of Blood Donor Sample Tubes

Introduction and Background 1.1 The NHSBT (NHS Blood and Transplant) is a Special Health Authority responsible for the provision of blood components and tissues and a range of associated specialist laboratory and patient therapeutic services to hospitals in England and North Wales.

1.2 Within theManufacturing and Logistics (M&L) Directorate of the Authority, the Testing function performs a wide range of testing services. These include the large-scale blood grouping and microbiological screening of blood and tissue donations. Needs standard paragraph from Neil Phillips adding here

1.3 Currently the NHSBT has 2 testing sites throughout England at which just over 1.5 million blood and tissue donations are tested for a range of microbiology markers each year. The 2 sites are based at Filton (Bristol), and Manchester. Orders and deliveries against any contract would be from several locations throughout England.

1.4 When each donation is bled there are also a minimum of 3 x 6mL sample tubes taken into K2 EDTA tubes, which have colour coded caps for identification purposes. Tubes are of the evacuation type which allows the safe and sterile transfer of blood without having to remove the cap. One is bled for blood grouping (purple cap), one for nucleic acid testing (yellow cap), and one for the serological screening of microbiological agents (red cap). An NHSBT unique bar-code label is affixed to each tube at the donor's bed over a pre-existing blank manufacturer's label, and the samples are then transported to the testing site.

1.5 There are also selective tests done on some donors that will require additional tubes such as the white top EDTA tube, and also smaller 4 mL EDTA tubes for haematological and Quality Monitoring investigations, one of which is a K3 EDTA tube.

1.6 Future options that may be considered to be supportive of future innovation within the timeframe of the contract are: a) to change one of the three main tubes to a dry tube (enhanced clot retraction) for serum rather than K2 EDTA b) to change one of the three main tubes to 9mL rather than 6mL c) to change one of the three main tubes to a gel separation tube. d) to change the colour coding of the caps e) to have different colour coded inserts (coloured rings)within the caps for sample subset differentiation. f) To reduce the sample tube number taken for each donation