A study of operational issues in blood bank

Abstract

Blood bank is a critical component of hospital supply systems. The blood bank in a hospital is usually administered and managed by a qualified medical professional, called Blood Bank administrator (BBA).The operational responsibilities of a BBA include planning and collection of blood, and responding to demands arising from hospital wards. The conflicting objectives of a blood bank are: (a) to meet (planned) user requirements, (b) enhance the service level and (c) minimize wastage of blood and its components. The operational decisions relating to a blood bank are influenced by (a) stochasticity of demand and supply, (b) componenting (possibly due to technology choices) of whole blood, (c) Perpetual gap between demand and supply, (d) substitutability of blood and its components and (c) fixed useful lifetime of blood and its components. This investigation attempts: (a) To predict demand and supply of blood and its components, (b) To determine the frequency in which to organize blood donation campaign and quantities to be collected in each campaign, (c) To plan the amount of whole blood to be componented between two successive campaigns and (d) To characterise the motivational factors for blood donation The study uses data collected from two representative hospitals i.e. one a general hospital and other a speciality hospital. The study proposes a decision support system (DSS) designed in three interdependent modules viz. (a) housekeeping and maintenance of data, (b) analysis of data to identify demand and supply pattern and (c) a simulation model to help the blood bank administrator in day-to- day operations. Data Analysis is performed to understand the systemic parameters viz. daily aggregate demand, daily aggregate supply, number of (daily arrivals of) requisitions, and size of a requisition. These distributions are used in the simulation module. Besides, prediction of daily aggregate demand and daily aggregate supply is attempted by using multiple regressions based on hospital parameters like daily aggregate bed occupancy, daily indoor admissions, number of major operations conducted and number of daily casualties admitted in the hospital. Simulation is used, to study the effect of policies viz. substitutability, ordering policy and componenting policy on shortages and outdates. Tests of hypotheses and ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) are carried out on simulation output of shonagcs and outdate, independently, to study the effect of policy parameters. Using data analysis parameters and the simulation model a DSS is designed. It determines the time for next blood campaign and an upper bound for collection quantity. It also determines amount of whole blood to be componented (group wise) between successive campaigns. In India blood banks face perpetual shortage of supply. A bulk pan of supply comes from voluntary donation. To eliminate the supply shortage in the long run, there is a need to augment the collection by voluntary donation. Hence, there exists a need to understand the attitude of citizens towards blood donation. To facilitate this understanding a survey of attitude towards blood donation is carried out. The findings are: (a) Many demotivating myths exist among people related to blood donation, (b) Knowledge about blood donation plays less dominant pan than emotion, (c) Willingness to donate blood is driven by emotion for less finally educated and less economically well off section of the society and (d) Emotional message plays relatively more important role in converting a non-donor to a novice and finally to a donor.