Digi-Trax Enhanced Blood Bank Printers

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In our literature and on this web site we often make reference to Digi-Trax Enhanced Blood Bank Printers. This page defines what we mean by these references.

Explanation:

Digi-Trax Corporation has been directly involved in the development of the ISBT 128 blood bank industry standards since 1990. The company has participated in virtually every ICCBBA Working Party on Automation and Data Processing meeting over the last ten years and has participated as a member of the AABB ISBT-128 Implementation Task Force. Our involvement has been primarily as a consultant with specific knowledge about thermal label imaging and bar code scanning technology. We have also been students learning from our many experiences in developing blood bank applications. We have applied this knowledge by extending the capabilities of several printer models manufactured by two of our printer suppliers (SATO America and Zebra Technologies). Many of these extensions are exclusively available only in printers manufactured for us by our suppliers.

Digi-Trax is an ICCBBA registered manufacturer (see: www.iccbba.com)
If you are registered, you can utilize the Digi-Trax provided valid & invalid ISBT 128 bar codes to help with your validation process.

Printer Enhancements Table

Printer Enhancement	Sato BB412e	Zebra Z4M PLUS-BB
Disable label repeat	Yes	Present
Head check before print	Yes	NA
Resident scaleable outline fonts (ISBT-128)	Yes	Yes
Resident biohazard symbol (ISBT-128)	Yes	Yes
Resident Codabar ABO-Rh Graphics	Yes	Yes
CRC transmission error detection	Yes	Present

NA indicates that the enhancement is Not Available. Present indicates that the enhancement is normally present on a standard "off the shelf" printer. Yes indicates that the enhancement has been added exclusively for Digi-Trax Corporation.

Printers that support the enhancements listed above are better suited to address the reliability and quality issues often faced by the blood bank.

These enhancements become requirements when using Digi-Trax's HemaTrax.LPS™ software products. The inclusion of resident fonts and graphics greatly reduces the complexity, time overhead and operational problems that are often caused when software must download the printer with these graphics.

Digi-Trax strongly recommends that all blood bank customers buy label printers that are capable of 300 dot per inch print resolution. The printer industry now supports this standard dot resolution at very affordable prices. The extra resolution produces labels with crisper images and that are more legible than the old 200 dpi technology. For those customers who want to save up to 50% on pre-printed unit number labels, 300 dpi print resolution is required in order to print the ISBT-128 tube bar code labels in the unit identification number sets. All Digi-Trax software is written to drive only 300 dpi printers with the Digi-Trax Enhancements manufactured by either SATO America or Zebra Technologies.

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