The Welsh Blood Service improves quality with SPC

Adept Scientific (Letchworth, Herts) and the Welsh Blood Service (Rhondda Cynon Taff, Wales) are working together to develop their quality processes ensuring their blood products continue to meet tough regulations.

With a remit that includes checking the quality of blood from donors, quality control for blood components and analysis of attributes on third party blood packs, the Welsh Blood Service (WBS) carries major responsibilities. Add to those tasks the analysis of trends, forecasting of instrument failures and cost control, its quality system is understandably under intense scrutiny at all times. For more than ten years WBS has used Northwest Analytical’s (NWA) Quality Analyst, from Adept Scientific, to help monitor its output and product quality.

Quality Analyst is an important part of WBS; it is used not only for regular Statistical Process Control (SPC) but also in forecasting, correlation and setting confidence levels. While most input is manual, out-of-tolerance and out-of-specification flags aid operators to confirm the integrity of the data.

Michelle Evans, Head of Quality Assurance Laboratory, commented that not only has Quality Analyst provided a solution but has given her department a degree of confidence in planning new initiatives.

“Like most laboratories, we are always looking to push the boundaries and NWA's software has allowed us to do just that. Our SPC was pretty basic but we're now able to work on splitting out features to see more clearly what is happening and using techniques such as Cpk and regression, measuring the statistical shift away from our ideal values.

“Quality Analyst has given us the motivation to develop processes and staff, allowed all of us to do more, more effectively and continues to function without problems.”

NWA Quality Monitor and NWA Quality Analyst are supplied and supported in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Scandinavia and Nordic countries by Adept Scientific.

With offices in the UK, USA, Germany and throughout the Nordic region, Adept Scientific is one of the world's leading suppliers of software and hardware products for research, scientific, engineering and technical applications on desktop computers.