Bridging the Gap: Information Systems and Blood Bank Practice

Monday, October 19, 2026

8:15 AM - 9:15 AM EST

Room: B308/309

Program Chair(s)

Leana S. Serrano-Rahman, MPH, MLS (ASCP), CQA (ASQ) (she/her/hers)

Managing Director
Kalidad Healthcare Consulting
Bronxville, New York

Co-Chair(s)

SY

Sehyo Yune, MD, MPH, MBA (she/her/hers)

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Boston, Massachusetts

Speaker(s)

HS

Heather Smetana, MLS(ASCP) SBB

Laboratory Supervisor
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Baltimore, Maryland
RJ

Ronald Jackups, MD, PhD

Washington University in St Louis

Proposed Session Description: Information systems now touch every part of blood banking, from rule based decision support to the data needed for budgeting and strategic planning. Multiple layers of software interact and influence transfusion decisions. Yet the people who run the blood bank and those who build or support the technology often have quite divergent backgrounds, vocabularies, and priorities, and they must understand each other’s workflows to deliver a safe, coherent system. When that understanding is missing, the resulting knowledge gap can affect patient care by altering how blood products are managed, slowing turnaround times, or delaying transfusions. This session aims to bridge that gap by highlighting key questions IT and blood bank professionals can ask each other and by demonstrating how software design and configuration directly impact operations, patient outcomes and regulatory compliance.

Learning Objectives:

Identify key rule based decision configurations available in the BBIS
Explain how BBIS–HIS integration and configuration shape the final work product
Describe case scenarios where IT and blood bank operations jointly solved problems from different perspectives.