Background One of the barriers to increasing the number of eye donors and transplants is the lack of an integrated, real-time clinical workflow platform with capabilities to secure interface with external systems. It is well understood that costly inefficiencies exist in the current fragmented donation and transplantation ecosystem: systems operate in silos without seamless sharing of key data. A modern, interoperable digital system can directly increase the number of eyes procured and transplanted.

Methods We hypothesize that the use of the comprehensive iTransplant™ platform increases the number of eyes procured and transplanted. The platform is a modern web-based system which provides comprehensive workflow coverage for eye banking, advanced communication tools, a portal for eye surgeons to submit requests, and secure digital interfaces with external systems such as hospital EMRs, medical examiner/coroner case management systems, and laboratory LIS systems. With these interfaces, referrals, hospital charts and test results are received securely in real-time.

Results At over 80 tissue and eye banks in the United States, the use of iTransplant™ has led to a significant increase in referrals and eyes transplanted. Over a period of 19 months in 1 hospital system, during which the only major process change was the adoption of the iReferral™ electronic interface to automate donor referrals, the annualized average shows a 46% increase in referrals and a 15% increase in tissue/eye donors. Over the same time period, the integration with lab systems saved over 1,400 hours of staff time and increased patient safety by eliminating manual transcription of lab results.

Conclusions Continued successful results are achieved internationally in increasing the number of procured and transplanted eyes as a result of: (1) the automated, seamless, and electronic receipt of referrals and donor data by eye banks in their iTransplant™ Platform, (2) the elimination of manual data transcription, and (3) the increase in the quality and timeliness of patients’ data being available to donation and transplantation professionals.