echnological advances, including sophisticated new computer systems and special locks designed to prevent hospital workers from making traffic mistakes could hold the key to suffer blood transfusions.

More parents die from receiving the wrong blood then from any other transfusions error she or carelessness and over worked hospital often the outputs.

Now some transfusions excepts need computer systems may hold the key to error free transfusions. At Georgetown university hospital in Washington DC the staff is using a sophisticated computer system timed at wiping out transfusions error in its outpatient transfusion unit. They use handhold computers and bar codes to track blood samples from the time they are drawn from patients to the blood. The same method is used to matte blood in the let and to make to sure it goes it transfusion in to the right patient.

The system allied electric uses hand held the computer similar to a Palm Pilot that goes through a series of checks.

Dr. Gerald Sandler, director of Georgetown's blood bank and blood donor service, that the I-track system isn't suited for all sections of a hospital.

Emergency rooms, when quick treatment is often necessary, might be better served with a wristband system using color coding instead of the more time consuming bar code/ computer system, Sandler said.

While hi-teach computer systems appear to offer one of the best ways to prevent transfusion related deaths, some hospitals use a more modest but effective looking device to prevent mistakes.

Patients have three-latter codes on their wristbands. When a blood sample is drawn to be tested, the patient code is written on the tube of blood. When the hospital blood bank sends out a unit of blood for a specific contain.

The transfusions read the patient's wristband code and uses it as a vombination to unlock the blood lock on the plastic bag. If the code doesn't open the lock blood can't be transfused. Still, not all hospitals like the locks.

In the United States between October 1999 and September 2000, 23,523 transfusion-related errors and accidents were reported to the Food and Drug. Administration most of the errors had to do with problems involving blood processing and contamination poor storage and the collection of blood from unsuitable donors exposed to various disease.

Dr Jeanne Linden, director of blood and tissue resources for the New York State Health Department, said: " The biggest problem is that right blood gets all the way to the hospital floor and a nurse administers it to the wrong person."

Hospital staff shortages also pose a huge problems Harried technicians and nurses may cut corners under pressure and make fatal mistakes.

The problem is so urgent that the Health and Human Service Blood safety Committee suggested more than a year ago that the government start a system requiring hospitals and independent blood banks to report all blood related errors. The proposal is still pending.

At the University of Texas South western Medical Center. James Battles. A biomedical communications professor has studied ways to track transfusion errors and near misses- transfusions in which mistake were discovered in time to prevent harm.