SCIENTISTS at Oxfordshire’s main hospitals have been nominated for a national award for reducing the organisation’s use of blood.

Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust (OUHT), which operates the John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill Hospital, the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and Banbury’s Horton General, has been shortlisted for a Patient Safety Award.

The trust has been nominated for reducing its use of blood transfusions by 10 per cent in just one year.

By creating an online ordering system, which offers doctors alternative treatments to transfusions, OUHT has saved £500,000 and reduced its blood usage by 3,000 units.

Professor Mike Murphy, consultant at the JR transfusion laboratory, said: “The system has worked really well as there have been incredible technological innovations in the treatments of diseases such as cancers or gastro-intestinal diseases, which previously required blood transfusions.

“There are now a lot of drugs which do the same job, and in some cases studies have shown that less blood used in transfusions leads to better outcomes than too much blood.”

Biomedical scientist in the transfusion laboratory Francis Ramos said: “It is great.

“Oxford is the first hospital to use this.

“We are very proud of it.”

OUHT was the first trust to trial an online service, which gives NHS Blood and Transplant direct access to the hospital’s records and alerts them when reserves are low.

Professor Murphy, 64, said: “The system is incredibly efficient as the distribution centre can see exactly how much blood we’ve got.

“So instead of ordering in blood or predicting how much blood we need, the distribution centre knows exactly how much is required every day.”

Over the past 15 years, innovations in surgery and the treatment of conditions that often needed transplants have led to a 25 per cent decrease of the use of blood across England and Wales.

Professor Murphy added: “Blood is now used for the sickest patients, people with leukaemia or people who have suffered a major trauma like a car accident.

“The blood that is donated goes to those most in need, so it is still important to give.”

After donors give blood at the Oxford Donor Centre, it is then taken to a distribution centre in Bristol, before being sent across the region.

Some of the blood will return to the NHS Blood and Transplant regional distribution centre, also based at the John Radcliffe Hospital, which serves Oxfordshire and areas of Swindon.

To sign up to become a donor visit blood.co.uk or call 0300 123 2323.