Emerging technologies for mitigating the risk of bacterial contamination in platelets, including pathogen reduction and secondary rapid bacterial testing, must be evaluated by hospital transfusion service decision makers in terms of budget impact and shelf life considerations.

An interactive, customizable budget impact model allows hospitals to understand the comparative costs of these competing technologies.

Although pathogen-reduced platelets have slightly greater total annual costs than those tested with secondary rapid bacterial testing, they provide additional safety benefits and cost offsets not experienced by rapid-tested units.