New Delhi, June 14 (IBNS): Indian Society of Blood Transfusion & Immunohaematology (ISBTI), a non-profit voluntary organization, has developed a system to create electronic directory of blood donors for the first time in India.
The project was launched on Thursday, on the World Blood Donor Day.
Dr. Yudhbir Singh Khyalia I.A.S., National President, ISBTI said, “Our mission is to achieve 100% voluntary blood donation in the country and to attain quality standards in blood transfusion services. Our vision is that Safe blood should be waiting for the patient not the patient waiting for the safe blood.”
Electronic directory of blood donors will help Blood Banks to store & maintain a minimum level of inventory of all blood groups. This will eventually eliminate emergencies & the burden on the patients & their attendants, Singh added.
To collect donor‘s data a user friendly SMS System has been developed by Dr. Rajeev Joshi, Director, HITECH Medical Informational Services Pvt Ltd, Pune.
This directory will be accessible from blood banks all over the country. In this system donors as well as people who have not donated blood before can register with the service. To register, people just need to send an SMS BRAVO BLDDNR to +919246356765.
On receiving the SMS the electronic registry will send one SMS asking donors blood group (ABO and Rh), age, sex, area, city with pin code number and number of donations.
Dr. Rajeev Joshi said, “If one has donated blood before, the service will ask the donor date of last donation as well as preferred blood bank. Providing name and birth date are optional. When there is need of blood matching donors group at blood bank near your address the service will ask donor whether you are available for blood donation at that time."
"Some information regarding eligibility for donation is asked through SMS template. If donor is available and eligible to donate, he will be requested to donate blood at the blood bank,” Joshi said.
If eligible donor is not available, he or she will not be sent request for duration as per reason of non availability. This will help the service to get high success rate in donor search.
Donor will not be called to donate within 4 months of date of last donation. This will help to avoid repeated calls to same donors again and again.
It will also send request to those who have never donated before.
Women will not be called during 8 pm to 8 am.
Frequent donors will be preferred during emergency whereas first time donors will be invited for non emergency requirement. Various such mechanisms help to filter data and increase efficiency of the system.
Sanjay Gupta, Chief Operating Officer, ISBTI, said that this service is fully automated and available 24x7 to all registered blood banks in the country free of cost.
Before registering any blood bank in to the system, ISBTI said it will ensure that safe blood practices are carried out by the blood bank in collection, storage and dissemination of blood.
Aligned to this project, ISBTI is also in the process of launching India’s largest online database of blood donors in collaboration with HITECH, Pune and Netrum Foundation, Delhi.
This donor’s database will be accessible through donor web portal to all blood banks and will enable them to search donors using advanced information technology, Gupta said.
