title: Implementation and validation of a conceptual benchmarking framework for patient blood management.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Public health authorities and healthcare professionals are obliged to ensure high quality health service. Because of the high variability of the utilisation of blood and blood components, benchmarking is indicated in transfusion medicine.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Implementation and validation of a benchmarking framework for Patient Blood Management (PBM) based on the report from the second Austrian Benchmark trial.
  
  
  METHODS
  Core modules for automatic report generation have been implemented with KNIME (Konstanz Information Miner) and validated by comparing the output with the results of the second Austrian benchmark trial.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Delta analysis shows a deviation <0.1% for 95% (max. 1.4%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The framework provides a reliable tool for PBM benchmarking. The next step is technical integration with hospital information systems.
authors.affiliation: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Digital Safety & Security Department, Assistive Health Information Technology, Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kastner
authors.affiliation: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Digital Safety & Security Department, Assistive Health Information Technology, Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Nada
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Breznik
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, General Hospital Linz, Austria.
authors.forename: Hans
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gombotz
authors.affiliation: Institute of Anaesthesiology, University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hofmann
authors.affiliation: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Digital Safety & Security Department, Assistive Health Information Technology, Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Günter
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schreier
mesh_terms: D001317:Austria; D019985:Benchmarking / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D001803:Blood Transfusion / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D057225:Data Mining / Q000592:standards*; D004282:Documentation / Q000592:standards*; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000145:classification / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans