HOSPITAL staff in Lincolnshire will be the first in the country to use chip and pin technology to track blood stocks.

The state-of-the-art system is said to virtually eliminate the chances of the wrong blood type being transfused into a patient.

This occurs a handful of times nationally each year, sometimes with devastating consequences.

Clinical staff at United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (ULHT), which runs sites in Lincoln, Boston and Grantham, have received NHS Smartcards, complete with a unique chip and pin number.

They are similar to a credit cards and will be needed by staff to access NHS systems.

Cheshire healthcare technology specialist MSoft has developed a system to run alongside the existing NHS technology to guarantee only the correct staff are handling bloods.

It also introduces safeguards to ensure the donor blood has not been out of the fridge too long, causing it to deteriorate in quality, as well as double checking it gets to the right patient.

The system will be introduced at ULHT sites by Christmas.

Neil Patterson, operations director at MSoft, said staff working at ULHT hospitals currently worked with a less reliable paper-based system.

He said: "The new system sees blood stored in locked fridges that can only be opened by a correct member of staff using chip and pin technology.

"A patient has a barcode on their wristband, which brings up details of their blood group.

"And the staff member would print out a ticket with the barcode detailing the patient's notes and take it to the kiosk. The system would then ask to read the barcode of the patient so it knows who the patient is and to check that whether there are any stocks of their blood type.

"When the member of staff comes to transfuse the blood into the patient, they scan the patient's wristband and the barcode on the blood for a final check that the right blood is going to the right patient."

Anna Temple, spokesman for ULHT, said: "We feel this is a significant development for our patients as it will modernise our transfusion practices and will enhance patient safety, as all blood products will be checked directly to the patient.

"The system minimises the chance of errors occurring once the blood has left the laboratory. It will ensure only fully trained personnel can access blood products and will monitor patients during the transfusion, increasing safety."