First BISKIT-Stakeholder Workshop on Blood Transfusion Systems and Crises

On 30 September 2021, we had our first stakeholder workshop on blood transfusion systems and crises. 29 colleagues from blood establishments, regulatory agencies, NGOs, and international organizations from many different countries participated in this meeting to discuss first results from the BISKIT project. We illustrated that a digital solution for stock control management might be a promising tool that may help blood establishments to assure blood supply before, during and after crises. Such a system could be linked to systems and processes used for the transport of blood products, donor recruitment, as well as external interfaces with other blood establishments, blood users, and national crisis management systems. As such, it may not only improve the efficiency of internal processes of blood services; in fact, it may also have the potential to increase the resilience of the blood transfusion system as a whole. In the end of the workshop, we discussed, and validated our suggestions concerning the requirements of such a system. The feedback from the workshop participants is highly appreciated, and is a critical factor to build a digital solution that really fits to the needs blood establishments have in that regards. We thank all the participants for taking their time and look forward to further discussions in the context of our project.