The provision of safe and quality-assured blood and blood products is a great challenge for blood establishments – particularly in times of crises. In these situations, it is important that blood establishments can rely on adequate information and emergency plans enabling them to ensure the continuous supply of blood and blood products to both the entire population, as well as the persons severely hit by the crisis. However, blood establishments are rarely included in national or regional emergency management plans, and often lack adequate information technology enabling them to foresee slowly emerging crises, or to react appropriately to catastrophic events that suddenly happen.
Against this background, the project “Blood Information System for Crisis Intervention and Management (BISKIT)” aims to contribute to the resilience of the blood transfusion systems of African partner countries. By exploiting the advantages of digital technology, the project is going to:
- Develop an information system for data based decision making before, during and after a crisis
- Provide an information system user interface (demonstrator)
- Deliver crisis management plans including recommendations for crisis communication strategies
- Offer capacity building on the use of the demonstrator and the respective crisis management plans
The project is one of six research projects funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education in the context of its funding program for International Disaster and Risk Management (IKARIM).
Project duration: 1 April 2020 – 30 June 2023