Case Study - Women & Infants Hospital Cryogenic Inventory Management System

Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a Care New England hospital, is one of the nation's leading specialty hospitals for women and newborns. The primary teaching affiliate of Brown Medical School for obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics, Women & Infants is the tenth largest obstetrical service in the country with more than 9,700 deliveries per year. 

The Division of Reproductive Medicine and Infertility provides diagnosis and treatment of infertility for hundreds of couples per year.  Treatments available include in vitro fertilization (IVF).  Simply stated, IVF involves removing eggs from a woman, fertilizing them in the laboratory and then transferring the fertilized eggs, or zygotes, into the uterus a few days later.

Professional Solutions Inc. completed a collaborative effort with the Division of Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at Women & Infants to create an electronic cryogenic inventory management system. 

The Key goals of the project included:

The project introduced several technical challenges, including:

Women & Infants needed to improve the way cryogenically frozen samples were managed.  They were maintaining several sets of data about the samples which needed to be cross-referenced any time something was added to or removed from the freezer tanks.  This process was time consuming and labor intensive.  There was also no efficient way to locate specific samples, compile information about the samples as a whole, or to verify that all of the samples were accounted for.  In addition, tracking the length of storage time and billing patients for storage fees was being done manually.  Finally, any solution had to integrate into the new EMR system to avoid multiple stand alone systems and the barriers to sharing patient information that they would create.

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The solution developed by Professional Solutions met all of the inventory management challenges.

Professional Solutions and Women & Infants conducted research with sample labels and equipment to find the precise combination of products that would perform well under actual lab conditions.  The label media had to be able to remain firmly attached to the frozen samples in the extreme cold environment of the cryogenic freezer.  The scanner had to be capable of reading the labels while samples remained in the freezer to prevent thawing of the samples.

While the cold temperature issues were being conquered, the miniature label size was also addressed.  Initially, a RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag solution was considered, but proved impossible because RFID technology was not able to function at temperatures of -196 Celsius.  The tiny labels were tested in the freezer to be sure that frost, fog and cold would not compromise data accuracy.  The barcode printer and scanner selected were designed for use with small size barcodes.

A data matrix barcode, instead of a traditional linear barcode, was chosen because of its capacity to hold more data in less space.  Human readable information was also printed on the barcode labels so that hospital staff could confirm the ID of the sample and to provide a failsafe way to ID the samples in case of a system failure or data loss.  In addition, an encrypted ID was embedded in the barcode data to enable the system to double check the accuracy of the scan.  This ensured that a read error would never cause a sample to be misidentified.

Once the database application was designed and created, existing data was crosschecked, combined and normalized, then imported into the new system.  Each sample could then be bar-coded and verified.    Sample storage and removal became easy to track by scanning the barcode label.  Reports and utilities for managing the contents of the freezer tanks made locating, counting, and compiling useful information about the samples simple. 

Updated 11/04/2004