The Smithfield Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Smithfield Foods, Inc., announced a $75,000 donation to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) to fund a proof of concept phase for UNOS’ Timely Donor Referral technology pilot.
The result of a challenge grant announced in March, Smithfield matched dollar-for-dollar all donations made to UNOS for the program to meet its $150,000 funding goal.
The Smithfield Foundation’s gift provides an exciting opportunity for UNOS to fund the development of this technology, which is used to match human-donated organs with the more than 100,000 men, women and children awaiting life-saving organ transplants.
With Smithfield’s gift, the pilot project will begin to build and test technology to integrate with electronic medical record (EMR) systems used by the nation’s health systems. The end result could be a quicker, more secure and more reliable exchange of highly time-sensitive information between the donor hospitals and OPOs.
Over the next few months UNOS will collaborate with a team of key partners, including Cerner, a national provider of electronic health information technology to hospitals and health systems; the Gift of Life Michigan (an OPO); and StatLine, a technology provider to OPOs.
This project seeks to exponentially increase the number of lifesaving organs available for transplant, and together, the team will identify, develop and test solutions, as well as analyze the cost benefits and expense for a national implementation of this solution.
The targeted completion of the proof of concept phase is December 2018.
