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Hematag
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The product

One tag per unit: every hand-off, every degree

Hematag is not another thermometer in the cold chain. It is the unit's record: where it went, who had it, for how long and at what temperature, so every return is a documented decision rather than a guess.

A unit of red blood cells on a steel bench, with the Hematag tag on its plastic.
  1. Close-up of the Hematag tag on a cold blood bag.
    01

    Tag on every unit

    An autonomous logger attached to each bag. It measures continuously through every period the unit spends outside controlled storage — at the bank, in theatre, at the bedside, and back again.

  2. At the operating room door, a phone reads the tag as the unit changes hands.
    02

    Scanned at every hand-off

    Each time the unit changes hands (issued at the bank, received in theatre or ICU, sent back) a phone scan records who, where and when. Time spent at each place becomes a measured number.

  3. At the blood bank, a technologist places the returned unit on the reader to see its curve and trail.
    03

    A documented decision

    At return, the technologist reads the curve and the trail together. The platform applies your site's rules and records the decision (return to inventory, discard or quarantine) with its reasons, as the traceability record the regulation requires.

  4. Tags being calibrated next to a reference probe in the laboratory.
    04

    Accredited calibration

    The sensors are calibrated in our accredited laboratory. Calibrated storage equipment is a regulatory requirement, and it is the part of the chain we control end to end.

The problem

The time rule is a clock, not a measurement

A transport cooler left on a cart in an empty corridor outside the operating rooms.

A red blood cell unit that left controlled storage outside a validated container is accepted back or discarded on elapsed time, not on its actual temperature: 30 minutes historically, 60 in current Canadian practice. The rule substitutes a clock for a measurement.

The approximation fails in both directions. In a two-year hospital study of the 30-minute rule (DeSimone, Transfusion 2018), the rule would have accepted units outside the allowed temperature, and replacing it with a single temperature check at return raised wastage by 13 %. Neither a clock nor a single reading shows what happened in between.

And the clock itself rests on paper. The bank knows when a unit left and when it came back, not where it was in between: whether it went straight to theatre or waited 40 minutes on a cart in a corridor. The proof is a procedure, not a record.

60 min
in Canadian practice, beyond which a returned unit is discarded without its temperature ever being measured
Canadian transfusion practice, extended from 30 min
+13 %
additional waste when a single spot-check is taken at return
DeSimone, Transfusion 2018
15.2 %
of red cell units would have been accepted by the 30-minute rule despite being outside the allowed temperature
DeSimone, Transfusion 2018

The problem is real and regulated. The Blood Regulations already allow an establishment to show that storage conditions were met in transport with a data logger, rather than a validated container alone (Health Canada guidance, s. 76 and s. 101).