Mark Johnson (left) and Kenneth Andreoni, M.D., associate professor and chief in the division of transplantation surgery at the University of Florida College of Medicine
As the surgical director of the University of Florida Health’s kidney-pancreas program, Kenneth Andreoni, M.D., often found it challenging to review UNetSM organ acceptance criteria. He envisioned a system that provided a detailed set of acceptance criteria for offers, which health care providers could program to better determine which types of organs their hospital would accept. In 2014, Andreoni decided to share his idea with UNOS chief technology officer, Alex Tulchinsky.
“As we originally envisioned it, a transplant program would describe the types of organ offers that they would accept,” Rob McTier, UNOS business architect, explained. “As we further examined the idea, we wondered if participants [in a pilot program] would be able to describe all the different types of organ offers they would accept.” This filtering concept evolved to also include unwanted offers, and soon after the idea for the offer filters pilot was born.
