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The story behind the headline? About the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust?
The Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust (ANBMT) thought the outlook was gloomy when the original winner of the contract to build its new Donor Registry System delivered the analysis document several months late and the refused to build the system. This was in February 1999 with only ten months to go before their nonmillennium compliant Foxpro based system would fail.
Second Chance
Having kept in touch with the trust since coming second in the original tender, CDP tendered once again. This time they were handed the challenge to build and deploy a system to match bone marrow donors to patients and automate the work of the trust's laboratories in only eight months with the absolute deadline of 31st December 1999.
The task was made even harder, as it soon became apparent the analysis document prepared by the other supplier was far from what was actually required, and missing some of the necessary complexity. As CDP's Technical Director, Mike Cooper explained: "The supplier used a microbiologist to prepare the specification. The downside of that approach is that the person knew too much about the subject and so made assumptions about how the system should work rather than talk to key trust staff in detail."
Long Term Relationships
CDP's MD Tim Chrisp takes up the story: "At this point many software houses would have dug their heels in and drowned the project in change control and contractual issues, since the fixed price tender was based on that flawed specification. But CDP look to build long term relationships with their clients. The trust had to have their system by the millennium, they do fantastic work for leukemia sufferers, and this is an example of how far we are prepared to go in partnership with our customers. Our in-house project management methodology (PMM) does feature continuous customer involvement (CCI) to capture and deal with a customer's changing requirements as a project is implemented but this project did require an extra special commitment from our staff!"
As Kathy Lewis, one of CDP's Technical Leads on the projects commented: "We did have a few sleepless nights wondering if the requirements would ever stop coming. Even after acceptance testing we were asked implement some more new essential requirements in time for the imminent go-live."
CITRIX Metaframe
Another technical challenge was the trust's decision, made in July, to deploy the new system on new NT servers using Citrix Metaframe. Whilst making deployment easier, we did anticipate a few teething problems, and that did prove to be the case.
Migration Challenge
A key part of the work was the migration of the trusts existing 300,000 donors, 30,000 patients and other data from the existing legacy Foxpro system. CDPs migration expert Steve Szijj: "In all we test migrated the data six times, each time receiving more feedback and requests from the trust. Even up to go-live week more bad data was being entered onto the Foxpro system as it lacked the validation rules of its replacement. With all the rehearsals behind us the live migration went very smoothly."
CDP Delivers
In spite of the vast amount of extra functionality provided, the newsystem, named SOLAR, went live on December 6th, just in time for the millennium. CDP have signed a support and maintenance contract with the trust and look forward to starting on the second phase of the project in 2000.
A final word from CDPs Managing Director Tim Chrisp: "We always emphasise to prospective customers that CDP has people with the energy, ability and commitment to meet any challenge and this project is proof that we really do deliver on that promise".
Call our Sales Line on 020 3355 4370 or email us to discuss your requirements for your next project.
The SOLAR system holds the details of all 300,000 of the trusts prospective Bone Marrow Donors - people who have volunteered to have their tissue type information placed on the register in case a donor of that tissue type is needed for a patient.
When a new patient is added to the register a search is run to find any donors who could possibly match the patient. There are some complex algorithms involved to only pick out the best matches, since donors are tissue typed to varying degrees of detail and accuracy. Originally matching was done only with serological testing now much more detailed molecular DNA typing has been introduced. Some patients can have a quite common tissue type, whereas others can be extremely rare. When you see an appeal for marrow donors in a newspaper, that patient probably has a rare tissue type. Publicity of this type usually results in a rush of new donors getting in touch with the trust. The system is built to handle a surge in the number of new donors, indeed the trust needed the system to cope with their plans to add another 100,000 donors to the system in the near future.
The workflow associated with putting a new donor onto the system, including automatically generated letters and barcodes labels for blood samples is automated by the system.
Once the trusts tissue typing experts have selected one or more prospective donors for a patient, each donor may need to be sent for further more detailed tests. The system automates this process as well. In all there are over eighty personalised letters which can be produced by the system.
The trust has its own laboratories which process the returned blood samples. The entire workflow of the labs is now automated from the point the samples are received to the alerting of key staff that the set of tests for a donor are complete. The lab staff analyse the samples and the blood and tissue type information from each test onto the system. Barcodes are scanners are used wherever possible to speed up data entry.
The trust searches for donors on behalf of other registries around the world, and can itself request searches by other registries. Many of these tasks are handled by automatic interfaces.
The system also performs many other functions such as monitoring when donors are too old to be donors, or checking new or updated donors against patients who are still waiting for a match.
The trust now have a world-class registry system which will be enhanced even further by the second phase of the project planned for 2000.
About the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust
The Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust is a registered UK charity which exists to match volunteer bone marrow donors with patients throughout the world, who are in need of lifesaving bone marrow transplants.
Founded in 1974, the trust has saved thousands of lives, and has built up one of the largest databases of unrelated donors in the world.
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