In tending to their patients, the NICU team usually face a variety of illnesses, ranging from genetic diseases to birth-related complications. The infants’ whole well-being must be taken into account as well, calling for the NICU team to provide complex multi-disciplinary care. They must also maintain a nurturing environment both for the infants and their families – all while making delicate decisions and performing intricate treatments. In addition to the inadequacies in staff, equipment, and space that hospitals usually have to deal with, the stress within their processes could easily affect the department’s performance.

This is particularly evident in their blood analysis procedures. The usual practice of sending samples to the central lab can significantly lengthen the process time. This could make the samples more susceptible to mishandling, mislabeling, and clotting. When the central lab encounters the untimely calibrations and maintenance for the analyzers, a bottleneck in samples is inevitable. Re-sticks and avoidable transfusions are also commonplace in this department. Babies can lose up to 15% of their already limited blood volume during a two-week stay. This is due to their still underdeveloped neonatal bone marrow and inability to sufficiently replace blood.