For the second year in a row, UNOS and NATCO (The Organization for Transplant Professionals) explored “what is possible” to improve organ transplantation technology during NATCO’s 2018 annual meeting, August 8-11, in Indianapolis. At this year’s UNOS innovation event, transplant professional volunteers partnered with UNOS staff to identify UNetSM system enhancements. UNOS engineers created and demonstrated the proposed changes, asked participants for more feedback, and adjusted. UNOS staff also gathered additional suggestions to consider for future releases.
The first innovation event of this kind was held in October 2016, in conjunction with Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO) IT, Quality and Education councils and was a huge success based on attendee feedback.
Interested in an upcoming collaboration? UNOS innovation events are planned for the ASTS Winter Symposium in January and the UNOS Transplant Management Forum in May. Contact UNOS IT Customer Liaison Tara Taylor (804-782-4902) for more information.
Current Improvements
Transplant professionals identified improvements that they said would allow them to work more efficiently. See below for more details on the changes.
DonorNet®
Completed
- 9/19/2018: A new feature in the organ offer reports allows DonorNet users to search by donor ID.
WaitlistSM
Planned
- 10/18/2018: We are currently working on a way for transplant hospital staff to share user-created custom reports with others.
Previous Improvements
DonorNet®
- 12/7/2017: OPOs can electronically notify transplant programs that they have a candidate that is primary or back-up on a match. This additional notification is meant to expedite the organ offer process by keeping centers more informed regarding their candidate’s position on the match.
- 12/7/2017: We modified organ offer notifications so that the offers come from “DonorNet” as opposed to from the “UNOS Organ Center”. The Organ Center’s 800 number will continue to be displayed for caller ID purposes on all offers.
- 12/6/2017: We added five infectious disease tests (West Nile, West Nile NAT, Chagas, Chagas NAT, HTLV NAT) to the Infectious Diseases tab. We’ll also revise the local deceased donor record XML Schema to incorporate these new test results. These results will not be required to run a match or send an electronic offer notification.
- 10/4/2017: We added the transplant center (TXC) on-call contact name to the Offer Details section of the Match Results page. This enables users to know what person is associated with the phone number displayed so that OPO staff will no longer need to search elsewhere for contact names when calling the on-call contact.
- 9/6/2017: Host OPOs can now print an audit log of donor blood typing and subtyping activity in DonorNet.
- 8/23/2017: We brightened the highlight that indicates the primary patient on the match run. The brighter highlight s legibility and helps OPOs ensure that they allocate organs in the proper sequence.
TIEDI®
- 2/7/2018: Candidate or donor identifying information will remain at the top of the screen as users scroll down forms to enter data.
WaitlistSM
- 8/30/2017: When removing a liver candidate from Waitlist, users now have the option to copy the most recent labs entered in the candidate record to the removal labs if they are the most recent labs available for the patient prior to removal.
Questions?
If you have questions about these system changes, please contact UNOS Customer Service at (800) 978-4334 or [email protected].
