JR-08-INVICTUS : Blood Donation

BloodHelp - A Website that Saves Life

Team members :

Srushti Sambare
Tasmiya Khan
Ketaki Nalawade

Problem Statement :

As the title suggests, the problem statement is regarding blood donations. This problem statement is given by LifeNorth Foundation. Their mission is to make blood donation and retrieval of blood simple and doable for every individual. Our blood distribution network connects matched donors with the banks and patients who need blood the most.

Our main goal is to digitize blood donation and other processes involved so that a donor can donate easily and a receiver can receive it quickly.

Challenges :

The blood donation market is highly unorganized
No connectivity between the different levels of responsible organizations
Managing data and donor base is a tedious task
Potential donors avoid visiting centers due to lack of management and the long queue
Lack of knowledge and awareness regarding blood donation
Eligibility of the donor
Blood compatibility
Slow process. Blood quality gets affected
Real-time blood data not available

Approach Followed :

The approach we are following for the above-stated problems is given below :

The blood donation market is highly unorganized
- . To make something organized, digitalization is the only solution. And hence, with BloodHelp, we are trying to digitalize the process of blood donation as well as receiving the blood for a patient.
No connectivity between the different levels of responsible organizations
- Many organizations work at different levels. The major ones are - blood banks, hospitals, and NGOs. And the one who donates as well as receives the service (here, blood) is a citizen. Having excellent connectivity between them is extremely important in order to build a sense of trust and also to increase the number of donors for a better cause.
- To ensure this connectivity, we have all 4 levels of participants on a single platform itself!
Managing data and donor base is a tedious task
- With the increasing data, it is difficult to handle it meticulously. The data consists of sensitive and important information like 'blood type'. A slight mistake in the data can lead to fatal casualties. That's why, efficient data handling plays a significant role.
- Hence, on BloodHelp, the data is stored digitally and only the admin has an access to manipulate it (only if required). Thus, data management task becomes easy.
Potential donors avoid visiting centers due to lack of management and the long queue
- There are a lot of people who have the urge to donate their blood but what stops them is the lack of management and the long queues at the centers.
- But what if you can schedule an appointment to your nearest center to donate blood ? No long queues. Sounds cool, right ? You can actually do that on BloodHelp ! With saving someone's life, you can also save your time.
Lack of knowledge and awareness regarding blood donation
- This is the most import challenge. Many a times, we have no idea about a blood donation drive running even in our vicinity. People are not aware about the importance of healthy blood, the related diseases and also campaigns running near by.
- To solve this problem, we have an 'Awareness' page wherein we share all the above-mentioned knowledge.
Eligibility of the donor
- As per the reports and some statistics, it is found that there are cases where the blood donated by a donor was not actually healthy. You never know what the donor is hiding beneath. Maybe a tattoo ?
- And that's why we have a donor eligibility form to fill. If the potential donor fails this test, the donor can actually not visit the donor interface where the campaigns are displayed and appointment bookings are done.
Blood compatibility
- As the data is now digitalized and organized, it is much easier to find donors with compatible blood types.
Slow process. Blood quality gets affected
- Here, as the process for finding a compatible donor was quite slow, the already stored blood used to lose its quality.
- But now, a person in the need of blood will no longer need to forward requests for blood on social media. But, can get blood with just a few clicks.
Real-time blood data not available
- Again, BloodHelp allows the Blood banks and hospitals to update the real time data which says a lot about the accuracy.