Twenty Years: How ABM Started

I started Australian Blood Management in 2006. I had a Haemonetics CS5 cell saver, a bag of consumables, a mobile phone, and a willingness to drive to wherever the work was. I'd trained at Papworth in the UK, come to Australia in 2000 for what was supposed to be a few months, and somehow never left. I'd worked at St Vincent's, Royal North Shore, spent time in the corporate world, and ended up as Chief Perfusionist at the Children's Hospital at Westmead.

But the thing that kept nagging at me was this: blood management in Australian hospitals was an afterthought. Cell salvage was underused. Perfusion services were stretched thin and treated as a cost centre rather than a clinical service. Patients were receiving allogeneic transfusions they didn't need because nobody had offered them an alternative.

So I decided to do something about it.

The early days

The first year of ABM was unglamorous by any measure. I was the entire company, perfusionist, salesperson, accountant, and delivery driver. I'd take a call at 6pm for a case the next morning, pack the car, set the alarm for 4am, and drive. The cases were mostly cell salvage. Orthopaedics. Spinal surgery. The occasional emergency. Whatever hospitals needed and couldn't resource internally.

What I learned quickly was that the demand was there. Surgeons wanted cell salvage on their lists. Blood bank managers knew the transfusion data didn't look great. But nobody had the bandwidth to set it up, train staff, and run the service consistently. That's the gap ABM was built to fill.

Growing the team

You can only run a clinical services company as a one-person show for so long before something breaks — usually you. The turning point came when I started bringing on other specialists who shared the same frustration I had: that the quality of blood management in this country was being limited by workforce and access, not by evidence.

We grew steadily. Not through aggressive marketing or venture capital, but through doing good work and being reliable. Hospitals that trialled us kept us. Surgeons who worked with us once asked for us again. It turns out that when you show up on time, know your equipment, and care about the patient on the table, people notice.

What ABM looks like now

Twenty years on, ABM has a team of specialists working across hospitals in NSW and Victoria. We run cardiac perfusion circuits, cell salvage programs, HCU cleaning services, and we're the exclusive Australian distributor for the GAMPT BCF300 bubble detection system.

We've also branched into areas I never anticipated when I was loading equipment into the boot of my car. ECMO staffing. Outreach missions to the Solomon Islands with the ALEAN neurosurgical program. Consulting on patient blood management protocols. The work has expanded, but the core hasn't changed: we exist to make sure patients get the best possible blood management during surgery.

Why I'm writing this

We're about to be a lot more visible. Not because we've hired an agency or had a rebrand, but because I think the work we do is genuinely interesting and we should talk about it more. Perfusion is one of those professions that most people, including most people who work in hospitals, don't fully understand. We want to change that.

So if you're a perfusionist, a surgeon, an anaesthetist, a nurse, a procurement manager, or just someone who finds the inside of an operating theatre fascinating, follow along. We'll be sharing what we know.

And if you're curious about what a perfusionist actually does at 6am on a Monday morning stick around. We'll show you.