Quality Donor System™

The Quality Donor System (QDS) is a health-history self-interviewing system used to qualify blood donors. It embodies audio-visual touch-screen computer-assisted Self Interviewing (AVT-CASI) to provide a simple multimedia experience for potential donors. Salient characteristics of QDS are:

• Donor self interview
• Uses AABB Uniform Donor History Questionnaire (UDHQ) - 48 multimedia questions [Most current version 1.1]
• Staff review - assures completeness and consistency of donor responses and staff decisions relative to center's SOPs
• Intuitive touch and stylus operation produces an auditable paper record
• Scientifically proven to reduce or eliminate human errors and improve quality
• English & Spanish languages available
• Communicates with existing BECS. No retraining required for registration
• Installed in six regional blood centers and two hospital blood banks
• Over 2,000,000 completed donor interviews through 2008
• FDA 510(k) cleared

How QDS works

The Talisman Quality Donor System is an automated donor screening system (ADS). It currently supports English and Spanish, but can be extended to include an unlimited number of other languages. The system is a multimedia system, meaning that screening questions are presented to the donor using audio, text and photographs or other graphics such as maps. This combination of modalities maximizes comprehension and also addresses health illiteracy by providing multiple, mutually-reinforcing cues.

The Quality Donor System is based on Audiovisual Touch-screen Computer Assisted Self-interview technology (AVT-CASI). This means that questions are presented to the donor using text, pictures and sound on a touch-screen tablet computer. Questions are presented one at a time. Each question screen consists of the question text, in the donor’s chosen language, a suggestive picture to aid recall and an audio reading of the question. When the question has been read once, response buttons are displayed. The donor can respond “Yes” or “No” to a question, return to an earlier question, skip the current question or ask for help (“???”). (See below)

Other question screen features include the ability to repeat the audio track (by touching the staff member picture) and blanking the question text and picture (for privacy, if using headphones for audio.)

In addition to the basic question format above, some questions include additional, user-modifiable text, such as the Medication Deferral List: (See below)

Another screen format includes maps:

The donor completely controls their own experience with the questionnaire, taking as much time as needed to complete all questions, with the ability to return to earlier questions and repeating audio on any question.

When the donor has completed the questionnaire, they are told to notify the staff for the next step.

Staff can review the donor’s responses either at the same workstation or at another workstation, depending on how workflow is set up. When staff selects this donor for review, the Donor Summary screen (below) shows the status of the donor’s responses. All questions with aberrant responses (those not expected) are highlighted with color and icons (green check for expected and yellow triangle for unexpected), and must be reviewed before the donor can complete processing.

In the example above, questions 5 and 9 must be reviewed. Note that questions 7 and 21 are in black type with no status icons. In the Uniform Donor History Questionnaire, these are questions only asked of female donors. Since this is a male donor, the female questions were not presented.

Staff chooses which questions to review and in which order. Questions are reviewed using the Review a Question screen below:

This screen lets the staff member specify the final response as well as their decision whether to accept or defer the donor for this question. If a deferral, the duration must be specified. In any case, the question review must be documented. Documentation can be done by choosing from a list of predefined comments and/or with freely entered text. To complete the question review and proceed, all elements must be entered.

The Quality Donor System is, to our knowledge, the only CASI system that tracks donor travel over time (below). This improves responses to travel questions, which are critical to determining exposure to malaria and other parasitic diseases, as well as HIV and vCJD risk. Travel history is cumulative, so donors do not have to remember all their prior travel. They only have to disclose travel since their last visit. Over time, this reduces post-donation information as well as the need to call a donor back with supplemental questions.

When all questions have been reviewed, the results are shown on the updated Donor Summary below. In this example, the red item is a question that was answered aberrantly but which does not require that the donor be deferred.

At this point, processing this donor can continue with staff recording their vital signs exam, presenting an informed consent and collecting the donor’s signature and a witness signature on a signature pad.

After these steps are completed, the donor history card is printed (below).

The above description illustrates the general design approach of QDS. All donor interactions use an intuitive audiovisual interface with touch-screen inputs. Staff interactions use the same paradigm.

Continue to Implementation

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Document last updated 9 January 2009