Introduction
From Silverstone Matchmaker
Contents |
Matchmaker Introduction
Matchmaker software is a clinical application that allows doctors and hospitals to match paired kidney donors and recipients more quickly and reliably than ever before. Using proprietary algorithms, powerful optimization methods, and up to 14-antigen matching, more living donor transplants can be performed with highly predictive cross-match compatibility for groups containing hundreds of recipients. With the power of Matchmaker, not only is paired kidney donation information management now possible, but it can be done more cost-effectively with better results.
What is Paired Kidney Donation (PKD)?
Paired donation is an innovative approach toward reducing the length of time spent on the wait list by utilizing healthy, living-donor organs when the intended recipient is incompatible with his or her donor. The basic process is to match two incompatible donor/recipient pairs with an alternate compatible pair.
Before PKD, a patient seeking a live-organ transplant would find a willing donor and blood tests would be performed to check for compatibility between the donor and recipient. More often than not, the pair would not be compatible and the quest would begin again for a new donor. With PKD, pairs of incompatible recipient/donor pairs can join a PKD program that looks for compatible matches between the pair members (see Figure 1).
In this way, the donor's contribution, although not going directly to the patient with whom they have a direct relationship, allows a transplant to occur that would not otherwise happen.
Figure 1. PKD starts with a pool of incompatible donor-recipient pairs and finds compatible matches with other pairs
What is Matchmaker?
Matchmaker is a software application that helps hospitals match kidney transplant PKD program recipients and donors quickly and reliably. The real strength and value of Matchmaker is its ability to quickly and accurately work with a wide variety of organ transplant clinical data for the purposes of providing valid recipient/donor cross-match pairing. Based on three proprietary algorithms, Matchmaker can virtually eliminate the long process of reviewing clinical data markers by hand to identify potential organ transplants.
Matchmaker allows you to:
- Integrate with hospital IT systems for updated PKD pool data on donor-recipient pairs
- Create cases for transplantation and have them removed from the pool automatically
- Validate hospital PKD pool data, flag errors during import, and maintain a history log of system activity manage multiple database pools
- Run match lists and see results based on multiple criteria (e.g., 8-antigen, 14-antigen, optimized)
- Run `what-if' matching scenarios by temporarily adding or removing pairs from the pool
- Answer questions about compatibility more easily thanks to easy to view data presentation
Using this Guide
This guide is intended as a tool for learning the basics of Matchmaker. By performing simple procedures using the sample data provided, you will gain a foundation for using Matchmaker throughout the lifecycle of the PKD process. The guide also provides some reference material, such as the required formatting of a data file for import into Matchmaker.
For more detailed information or assistance, contact Silverstone Solutions.
