UNOS DonateLife

October 25, 2000

Internet-based Transplant Program Celebrates Successes

Richmond, Va. -- Whether for a 5-year-old Miami boy in need of a kidney or a California woman donating her organs, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) utilizes Internet technology to save thousands of lives through the generous gift made by organ donors.

One of the greatest technology advances in transplantation celebrates its first anniversary today in continual 24/7 operation. On October 25, 1999, UNOS launched UNet^sm, an extranet used to maintain the national waiting list for organ transplants and match organs from donors with transplant recipients.

UNet^sm is used by both transplant hospitals and organ procurement organizations. Accessing an encrypted, password-protected secure Web site, hospitals list patients on the UNOS transplant waiting list. When an organ becomes available, the organization that recovers it uses the same Web site to match the organ to the proper patient. The hospital is then contacted and offered the organ for the matched patient.

"This is a first. Nowhere else is the Internet being used so directly to save human lives," said UNOS Executive Director Walter K. Graham. "Most people use the Internet for business or entertainment. The transplant community is using it to share life."

In its infancy, UNet had 13,000 data elements stored in a 14 GB database. That has climbed to 16,886 data elements in a 166 GB database. To prepare the application for launch, employees logged in more than 30,000 initial development hours. By Aug. 15, 2000, an additional 19,000 hours were recorded.

The Smithsonian Institute recently recognized UNOS' life-saving organ matching system by incorporating it into the Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology. The collection is a comprehensive anthology of significant achievement and innovation over the past decade, which have made substantial contributions to the advancement of the dynamic world of information technology.

UNOS maintains the U.S. organ transplant waiting list and brings together medical professionals, transplant recipients and donor families to develop organ allocation policy under contracts with the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. UNOS also collects, analyzes and publishes more data on a single field of medicine than any other U.S. organization.