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November 22, 2010

NMDP to Leverage IBM Analytics Software to Speed up Patient-Donor Matching Process



National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), an undisputed leader in the field of unrelated marrow and umbilical cord blood transplantation, selected IBM's WebSphere Lombardi Business Process Management (BPM) software to help automate its donor and patient management process. Automation and speeding up of the process is critical for the both the patients and donors involved in the cellular transplant cases.

Minneapolis-based nonprofit, NMDP is dedicated to ensuring all patients who need a transplant receive access to this potentially life-saving treatment. Under federal government’s C.W. Bill Young (News - Alert) Transplantation Program, NMDP operates the national registry---more popular as the Be The Match Registry, which provides a single point of access for transplant centers and patients to marrow donors and cord blood units.

The organization also facilitates transplants worldwide; supports a global network of hospitals, blood centers, public cord blood banks, laboratories and recruitment centers; conducts research; and provides education and support to patients, donors and healthcare professionals.

The objective of NMDP in adopting IBM (News - Alert) software is to dramatically speed the time to transplant for bone marrow transplant patients, which currently average 96 days. According to NMDP, as a result of the adoption of IBM's WebSphere Lombardi Business Process Management (BPM) software, as many as 10,000 patients may benefit from a transplant each year in the US alone. 

IBM's software incorporates advanced analytics, social networking and reporting to streamline the record matching process by automatically comparing millions of data records nationwide. These records include donor information, geographic location, as well as patient and recipient data.

“Many of these patients need a transplant quickly to treat their life-threatening disease. We expect our newly combined application suite to significantly reduce the time to transplant. This will help more patients get the transplant they need, when they need it, said NMDP CEO, Jeffrey W. Chell, in a statement.

With IBM's WebSphere Lombardi software the NMDP will be able to automate its screening processes, eliminating the need for complicated and time-consuming technical intervention and allowing staff to focus on facilitating the search process more effectively, IBM officials explained. 

“This breakthrough at the NMDP is a prime example of how health analytics can be used to mine data in new ways and streamline processes. New approaches to analyzing patient data are advancing the state of medicine and influencing research. IBM has made a significant investment in analytics over the years and applied this expertise to healthcare with literally life-saving results,” General Manager of IBM healthcare and life sciences, Dan Pelino, commented.

Recently, NMDP’s Be the Match Foundation and Be The Match Registry were presented with an Innovator Award in the Best Peer-to-Peer Fundraising category for their successful Team Be The Match fundraising initiative that allows their constituents to raise money and awareness to grow the Be The Match registry.


Madhubanti Rudra is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jaclyn Allard
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