The Department of Clinical Immunology comprises the region's blood banks together with all services within transfusion medicine. It also covers the tissue banks and various activities within transplantation medicine together with many aspects of bio-banking, cohort administration, virology testing as well as foetal immune medicine (including genetic blood typing of the embryo and foeto-maternal bleeding). The Tissue Typing Laboratory covers diagnostic immunology within disorders of the haematopoietic system and the immune system (including leukaemia and lymphoma, immune deficiencies, autoimmune diseases etc), which are being diagnosed and monitored.
The department is responsible for all aspects of blood and haematopoietic cell donations from unpaid volunteers and the various aspects of component production, blood testing (including single donation NAT for infectious markers) and QA, compatibility testing, recipient and donor safety, blood management as well as haemovigilance.
Medical experts from Copenhagen University Hospital Rigshospitalet have in collaboration with international colleagues developed European guidelines on how to handle abnormal uterine bleeding during and after menopause aiming inter alia to reduce the number of unnecessary uterine Dilatation and Curettage (D&C) procedures.
One thing is to have state-of-the-art scanners; another thing is to decode the scan images. Rigshospitalet was one of the first hospitals in Europe to acquire an ultra-fast CT scanner. The hospital is now teaching physicians from all over the world to read scans of the heart.
Measurable effects of prioritised and focussed health and safety initiatives only come after implementation; transforming words into action in daily routines. This is what makes a winner and it is on this basis that Rigshospitalet received the European Good Practice Award in April 2013.