1. Field of Application
This invention relates to the safety and security of articles; and more particularly to “match” controlled securement, and release from securement, of such articles.
2. Description of Prior Art
There are things, articles, which are found, located, stored, etc. at one location and that are to be moved to another location for specific purposes, and which must be secured while being so moved and then made available only for the specific purpose and probably by a person with authority to access the article for the specific purpose. One such thing, article, etc. may, for example, be one or more bags of blood found to “match” at a hospital, or from a blood supplier for a hospital, for infusing a “matched” patient or for possible use by a physician for a “matched” patient undergoing an operation. Another such thing or article might be “matched” human organs taken from a donor at one hospital and destined for a surgeon's use for a “matched” recipient at another hospital. While yet other such things or articles could be items of evidence from a crime scene that are to be transported in a secure manner to a police station, lab or prosecutor's office.
The use of blood and blood products, for example, continues to be the mainstay of therapy for surgical bleeding and trauma. Currently, when blood is required in the operating room or other hospital areas, a nurse or orderly is dispatched to the blood bank to retrieve type-specific blood for the patient. In general, a form of patient identification is presented by the nurse or orderly to the blood bank technician who, in turn, retrieves the required type-specific blood from the blood bank based on the patient's blood-type. The blood or blood products are then distributed a single unit at a time or as multiple units (in a cooler) to the nurse or orderly. The distributed blood products are then carried back to the site of therapy by the nurse or orderly where the personnel who will be administering the blood or blood products must check them for compatibility with the intended patient. The conventional process of checking blood requires one person to read aloud the intended patient's name, his hospital ID number, their blood product unit number, the blood product type, and the expiration date of the blood—while another person verifies this information as being correct for that particular intended recipient. However, despite these safety checks, it is still possible to administer the wrong blood to a patient and transfusion reactions due to blood-type incompatibility still occur [as demonstrated, for example, by Mybre B A and McRuer D., “Human error-a significant cause of transfusion mortality”, Transfusion 40:879-885 (2000); Blumberg N. and Heal J. M., “ABO mismatched platelet transfusions and concise outcomes after cardiac surgery”, Transfusion 42:166-172 (2002)]. Additionally, in busy medical centers with multiple containment coolers being dispatched to the operating room for administration to different patients, the potential continues to exist for the wrong container of blood to arrive in an operating room and be given mistakenly to an incompatible patient.
Also, with the ever-increasing frequency and growth of organ transplantation, a similar safety problem exists in making sure that correctly matched and type-compatible donor organs arrive at the intended recipient's location without error. Indeed, a highly publicized instance of a patient at Duke University who received incorrectly matched organs and subsequently died as a result, underscores the continuing need for an entirely new safety technology which is more reliable. Currently however, organs for transplantation are transported in unlocked containment coolers with the type-specific identification information merely taped to the outside of the carrier container. Moreover, no security device or safety means are in place within such containers to prevent tampering; and no access control device or security measures currently exist to prevent inadvertent mismatching and incompatibility between the type-specific organs then held within the containment cooler and the type-specific requirements of the person intended to receive the donated organ.
Currently, articles such as crime scene evidence, intended for court trial is often tracked using paper records (each person in possession signs his/her name); and no security devices are presently used to prevent tampering (or even destruction) during the custody and/or transport of of such physical evidence articles. There are, however, requirements in the legal field for identifying sequentially and recording chronologically those people who have been in possession of physical evidence (tissue, bullet fragments, bodily fluids, etc.), which will (or might) be used for a court trial. This is typically called the requirement for “chain of custody” evidence and allows the court to track all people who handle (or mishandle) the physical evidence. Yet, no device exists to date which provides both security and “chain of custody” record information for such evidence.
There are known containers specifically for use in transporting medical articles, but such containers, as shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,951,482 of Aug. 28, 1990 granted to G. L. Gilbert for “Hypothermic Organ Transport Apparatus” and U.S. Pat. No. 5,157,930 of Oct. 27, 1992 granted to S. C. McGhee and others for “Organ Preservation Apparatus” do not provide for any locking arrangement whatsoever and thus thus do not restrict access to the containerized article unless there is a “match” correlating the recipient with a donor or the article. There are also known containers that lock but such containers, as shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,133,842 of Oct. 17, 2000 granted to J. Garlepy for “Alarm System For Portable Container” only provide an alarm should the container move, tilt or its cover be opened while U.S. Pat. No. 6,430,689 of Aug. 6, 2002 granted to J. M. Lacombe for “System For Securely Transporting Objects in A Tamper-Proof Container, Wherein At Least One Recipient Station Is Mobile and Portable” requires input from a remote host in order to access the container contents. Neither of these types of containers are suitable.
There are mechanical locks that are intended for use with units of blood to restrict access to the blood to a particular recipient such as shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,787,222 of Nov. 29, 1988 granted to C. A. Irazoqui and others for “Combination Lock For Blood Identification System” and U.S. Pat. No. 4,265,101 of May 5, 1981 granted to H. Kaplan for “Blood Identification Means”; and even a computer controlled lock as shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,415,802 of Nov. 15, 1983 granted to G. R. Long for “Cross Identification System And Lock”. These locks and locking systems are, however, particularly adapted for articles such as units of blood and do not require all the inputs for an acceptable “match” before access to the article becomes available.
Computer controlled medical carts are also known. However, carts of the type shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,967,928 of Nov. 6, 1990 granted to C. L. Carter for “Inventory Control Including Individual Patient Listing and Medical Chart Record For Medication Cart” and in U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,732 of Jan. 15, 2002 granted to F. H. Foon and others for “Apparatus And Method For Storing, tracking And Documenting Usage Of Anesthesiology Items” are primarily intended for record keeping and billing purposes. In addition the storage of many articles for many intended recipients could very well result in release and use of an article for an unintended recipient, with possible life threatening repercussions.
Also known are highly computerized systems such as shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,835,372 of May 30, 1989 granted to P. P. Gombrich and others for “Patient Care System” that require relatively complex equipment that must be accessible throughout a hospital and that merely correlates a recipient and their medications but does not restrict access to the medication article unless there is a “match”; as well as that shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,318 of Dec. 21, 1993 granted to J. G. Gorman for Electronically Readable Medical Locking System” that broadly refers to a lock without describing or even suggesting: the environment where such lock would be disposed; how such lock would be employed; what such lock would interact with and how such interaction would occur to effect the locking and unlocking action. More importantly this system would be unacceptable because the end result of a “match” would be to merely display the code required to unlock the lock and that for only a short period of time.