Government ID, Smart Cards, Identification and Authentication

Blood bank uses biometrics for donor ID

Thursday, February 11, 2010
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The Indianapolis-based Indiana Blood Center had a problem. Regulations required that blood donors be positively identified each time they donated blood, but the problem was donors don’t always have their government-issued identification card, such as a driver license.

“You would be surprised how annoyed people would be when they couldn’t give blood,” says Pete Lux, manager of blood collection at the not-for-profit blood bank.


Forgetting IDs wasn’t the only problem either. Data entry errors were leading to duplicate records and it came down to names and date of birth weren’t good enough for record keeping, says Lux. The center had been storing Social Security numbers, a practice it wanted to stop to ease identity theft concerns. Read the full article … [end] 

Siemens along with the University of Graz, Austria have created an RFID-enabled blood monitoring system, according to AZoSensors.

The system consists of a temperature sensor, a chip and a battery. RFID labels contain information about the blood and help regulate the complete cooling series by using temperature sensors. The sensor remains in the same position throughout the entire transportation system, including the centrifuge, and is strong enough to endure centrifugal processes at 5000 times the acceleration of gravity.

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The Indianapolis-based Indiana Blood Center had a problem. Regulations required that blood donors be positively identified each time they donated blood, but the problem was donors don’t always have their government-issued identification card, such as a driver license.

read more »

Spain’s Balearic Islands Blood and Tissue Bank is using a combination of Nordic ID hand held readers with an RFID system from Barcelona-based Aifo Solutions to track some 30,000 blood bags.

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Schweizer Electronic and Siemens Austria have united to bring a new type of RFID transponder with an integrated sensor technology known as SEAGSens.

The SEAGSens technology will be used for temperature monitoring, tracing and identification of blood bags, medications and other food items. Schweizer Electronic, in collaboration with Offenburg University, will be responsible for the manufacturing of the transponders. SIEMENS will assume the distribution and marketing role.

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BIO-key International, a developer of biometric systems and solutions, has announced the launch of a fingerprint-based system called TruDonor ID. TruDonor ID is designed as a biometric solution for blood banks and others in the blood collection industry and serves as a means of positive identification of blood donors.

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Alien Technology recently partnered with Barcelona, Spain-based integrator Aifos Solutions for the implementation of an ultra high frequency RFID based hemo-derivative blood bag tracking application at the Blood and Tissue Bank of Balearic Islands.

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