Haemonetics

Source: Exec Digital UK

Date :29/10/2007 12:01:40

Brian Murray, Haemonetics Operations Directions, talks to Exec UK about new developments in blood separating technology.

Written by Douglas Downing & Produced by Paul Radbourne

For more than 30 years, Haemonetics has been at the cutting edge in blood processing technology. The Haemonetics system was marketed and developed by Jack Latham in 1971, with the first collections back in the early 1970s.

Haemonetics’ Scottish operations manufacture two families of products: donor and patient. Donor products are marketed to the blood donation industry and include products that automate the blood donation process and the processing of blood, while patient products are used in the surgical suite for blood loss management.

“The company has a history of developing solutions to customers’ needs,” explains Brian Murray, Haemonetics’ Operations Director. In Scotland the company produces over 4.7 million sterile, disposable kits annually for distribution around the world.

“Haemonetics’ Patient products offer the next generation in surgical blood salvage. These products are used in surgeries and trauma where significant amounts of blood are lost - for example in cardiac or orthopaedic surgery. Haemonetics developed the Cell Saver system to help in this area and has now further enhanced this process with the new OrthoPAT and CardioPAT systems.

“Previously in surgery the blood being lost by the patient would have been disposed of and the patient would be given a transfusion of blood donated by someone else,” says Murray. Haemonetics saw this as an opportunity and developed a system that is now the industry standard.

“The blood that gets suctioned off is held in a reservoir in the Haemonetics system, centrifuged down to packed red cells, and then cleaned with a saline wash solution. The blood is then available to be transfused back to the patient. All of the processing occurs in one closed loop, reducing any need for further processing and pooling of components, and in some cases, eliminating the need for a transfusion of donor blood altogether.”

Reducing waste

Over the next twelve months, Haemonetics is expected to see continuing growth. “We are in a growth organisation and have found ourselves expanding revenues by an average of eight percent over the past few years, in an industry with average three – four percent growth rates per annum. We are targeting double digit growth for the company in the future.”

“This year we are introducing a new line of suction products which complement our product offerings in Patient products, and we are expanding our product lines in other growth areas, such as our orthopaedic line, red blood cell line and information technology,” Murray explains.

Last year, the company acquired two information technology companies to complement its product portfolio, enabling it to provide a complete blood management solution to Haemonetics’ customers rather than just a blood collection service. Blood management solutions benefit Haemonetics’ Patient customers (hospitals) by improving patient outcomes and reducing costs.

For the other side of its business, the Donor products, 0ne of the major issues customers (blood collection centres) in general face is a continual fight with donor and blood shortages whilst recruiting new donors, and retaining the donors they currently have. Murray says Haemonetics is continually addressing a number of concerns with its customers.

“With our Donor products we look at making the most of reducing blood donor waste. In the UK, which is still a traditional market, in the majority of cases if you go to donate blood, you get stuck with a needle and bleed into a bag, the bag is taken away and processed at a laboratory into its component parts: red cells, plasma, and platelets. The blood service takes whatever blood components it needs at that time and then the rest of the blood components are disposed of.

“Haemonetics’ offering is an apheresis solution where collecting and separation of blood is performed at the source of the blood donation (that is, at the donor’s side), reducing costs, processing time, and manual systems. Apheresis donations also increase the yield, or the amount of each individual blood component that can be collected, thereby maximizing blood collections from each donor.”

Blood is donated through a Haemonetics machine and one of its disposable kits and spun at high speeds at the donor chair-side. The platelets, plasma or red cells or a combination of these are separated out into the collection bag(s) and the rest of the blood goes back to the donor, creating no waste.

The advantage of this system is twofold, for the blood transfusion service they can collect exactly what they need without any waste and for the donor, if it’s platelets they are donating they can donate again within two weeks. If you are a whole blood donor, then you have to wait three months before you can donate again in the UK. Through the Haemonetics system, plasma collection can be twice a week.

Haemonetics is currently working with the blood transfusion service in the UK to take these apheresis systems onto community blood drives, as is common in many other countries around the world.

Future developments

Haemonetics works very closely with its customers to understand new areas for development and through research it discovers new and innovative solutions. The company is continually looking for new acquisitions. Recently, it purchased an innovative stand-alone suction device that clears blood from the surgical incision point, making the surgical field clearly visible for the surgeon. This provided a solution that the company knew customers had an issue with in hospitals during surgery.

“We were told that if one operating theatre is working in a hospital then everything is fine, but if two or three are running simultaneously, and all pulling from the central suction system, then there can be a loss of suction and that causes problems.”

Haemonetics was able to identify a local (to the Boston HQ) company, which was working on a product, which it felt would be a good solution. Haemonetics acquired the company and now markets the suction device alongside the surgical blood salvage systems.

“We recently secured a contract with the French military because we added to the tender the suction device. The military saw the suction device as a vitally important piece of medical equipment for the use in Army hospitals,” Murray continues.

Through another company acquisition, Haemonetics purchased a US business which has been developing new ways to type blood using ‘holographic optical trapping’ of cells. There are many more possibilities for Haemonetics, and not just in its primary focus on blood management, but also in the areas of deriving income from licensing agreements in other medical fields.

Click here to visit the corporate brochure on Haemonetics