Program areas at CTS
Donor Testing blood donor and plasma Testing services provided by Creative Testing Solutions ("cts") are essential to ensuring the safety of the nation's blood and plasma supply. These Testing activities are absolutely necessary and mandated by the united states food and drug administration ("fda") to provide a safe blood product for transfusion to patients and to ensure safety of plasma products. Due to the significant health risks associated with the use of human blood and blood components, it is critical for public safety purposes that blood be properly tested before being introduced into the healthcare system for use by patients. A safe blood supply is critical to the well-being of the nation's healthcare system and its patients. The significance of the Testing of blood for public safety is even more pronounced in this age of threats from pandemics and terrorism. Creative Testing Solutions operated five donor Testing laboratories in 2022. Our first established laboratory is in tempe, Arizona. The additional laboratories are located in bedford, Texas, charlotte, north carolina, st. louis, Missouri and st. petersburg, Florida. These locations are strategically positioned near major airports in phoenix, dallas, charlotte, st. louis and tampa. All five dtl laboratories are food and drug administration (fda) registered facilities and hold currentcertifications for the clinical laboratory improvement act (clia) as well as accreditation with the american association of blood banks (aabb), the new york state department of health, California department of health services and state of Florida agency for health care administration. In addition to donor specimen Testing, the laboratories participate in clinical evaluation of reagents, test kits, and equipment. Cts provides the highest quality in Testing and service. The laboratories maintain internal quality control programs and participate voluntarily in external quality control programs. Blood specimens are processed utilizing state of the art technology with fda licensed test kits and reagents. All laboratories are equipped with multiple and redundant instruments required for routine processing. Additionally, each facility acts as a backup laboratory to the other cts labs. Special Testing our special Testing laboratory in the phoenix area performs confirmatory and supplemental Testing of donor samples as well as non-donation Testing such as donor re-entry, post exposure and donor follow-up. It also provides Testing for eye banks, tissue banks and cord blood centers. The special Testing laboratories also comply with clia, fda, ca, ny, md, and fl state regulations. Component quality control our component quality control laboratory in phoenix provides blood component quality control Testing. Residual white blood cell (rwbc) counts are performed on leukoreduced products. Factor viii and fibrinogen assays are performed on cryoprecipitate and plasma products. Bacteria detection is performed on apheresis platelets.
Research and development the cts research program is dedicated to advancing blood safety and evidence-based transfusion practices through sceintific research. The cts research program focuses on the development and/or evaluation of new blood donor screening technologies which significantly improve and promote blood safety in the areas of infectious disease, immunology, molecular diagnostics, and epidemiology. Additionally, the cts research program serves as the focus for a multi-institutional consortium which collects and integrates Testing data from approximately 75% of the us blood supply for the purpose of national haemovigilance, horizon scanning for emerging infectious diseases relevant to blood safety, and providing critical information for the evaluation of best practices in transfusion medicine, the promotion of donor health, and the improvement of transfusion recipient outcomes.