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How the Digitalization of Blood Donation is Changing Ukraine’s Blood System
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Last year, the American Red Cross faced an extreme blood shortage after its national reserves dropped by more than 25% in July 2024. This situation is not unique — countries from different regions of the world regularly face blood shortages. In just the past few years, Morocco, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom have reported acute deficits, with conflict zones such as Gaza being the most vulnerable.
In conditions of chronic blood shortages, it is important to effectively manage existing reserves and simplify the blood donation system to encourage new donations. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine immediately realized this need. Even before the major war, two-thirds of Ukrainian patients did not receive blood on time or at all, and in 2022, the burden on the blood system increased by 60%.
The key problem of the system, which struggled to meet the growing demand, was that Ukraine relied on so-called spontaneous donation. That is, a significant proportion of donors were not regular — their initiative occurred from time to time or only a few times in their lifetime, and they did not have much knowledge about blood donation or its restrictions. As a result, not only did the number of donations decrease, but the quality of the blood also suffered.
The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that blood needs can only be adequately met by building a stable base of regular voluntary donors. Moreover, these donors are the safest source of blood. Systematic donation has long been supported and advocated by specialized non-governmental organizations. In Ukraine, there was already a donor database created by the initiative DonorUA, an organization that actively works on recruiting donors. However, this was a non-governmental initiative, and a unified state system was greatly lacking.
At that point, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine decided to build a centralized government system. The Ukrainian GovTech company Strimco was selected as the contractor for the project. This article details the newly created eBlood system.
How will the integrated blood information system work?
eBlood is essentially a system that digitizes all processes within the blood system: bureaucracy related to donor registration and certificates, blood inventory management, production processes, and laboratories — everything that happens in blood centers and everything that involves donors.
The MH IT office, the Ukrainian Transplant Coordination Center, and international partners collaborated to design the entire system and develop procurement requirements for all its elements. This system is, obvioulsy, deeply integrated with the Electronic Health System (EHS) since a donor is, first and foremost, a patient. Developing the entire system would normally take 2-3 years, but as of now, three initial registries have already been completed and linked.
The first is the Visit Register, which tracks all visits to blood centers by Ukrainians. It provides software for blood centers, allowing register staff to record donor visit numbers, track the success of donations, and collect large amounts of data to implement «vein-to-vein» tracking. This means that the MH will be able to trace the origin of any blood sample and its delivery to a specific patient.
This, in turn, helps prevent and reduce the risk of disease transmission through donor blood and enables rapid identification of affected individuals and the donor if contaminated blood enters the system. Unfortunately, this is a common issue. For example, during blood transfusions, Ukrainians have been repeatedly infected with hepatitis.
The second goal of the Visit Register is to simplify bureaucracy for donors. Many donate blood to receive state benefits, such as financial compensation or extra leave days, as provided by law. To claim these benefits, donors previously needed a paper certificate. However, eBlood will digitize the process, offering electronic documents instead. Given that over 500,000 blood donations occur annually, this will significantly ease the process for many individuals.
The second key component of the system is the Donor Recognition Register, which records individuals who regularly donate blood. This status entitles them to various government benefits, such as financial payments, a 10% pension bonus, free public transport, etc. However, these motivators are often ineffective because they are difficult to obtain. For example, to qualify for this status, a donor must collect at least 40 paper certificates (sometimes more) over several years, leading many to abandon the process.
By combining simple digital processes with the possibility of new incentives, Ukraine can significantly boost blood donation rates. Without digitalization, however, this would have little impact.
Finally, the third component of the system is RLBCC, the register of licenses for blood collection and processing centers. This includes blood centers and medical institutions that process blood into plasma, medications, etc. The register will also enhance hemovigilance, ensuring the quality and traceability of donor blood.
The importance of this system cannot be overstated. If 100,000 patients receive blood transfusions each year and just 1% of them receive contaminated blood, that means 1,000 people will face health complications due to the transfusion.
Expected Results
These three system components are currently being implemented at the Ministry of Health. However, expectations for eBlood are already very high. The system will systematize information on most blood-related processes in Ukraine, while also encouraging Ukrainians to donate more frequently through a more efficient donor recognition system.
Moreover, future plans include expanding eBlood into a broader Information and Communication Complex of the Ukrainian Blood System (ICCBS), which will fully digitalize this sector. Planned features include:
- A personal donor account for tracking donation history
- An expanded incentive program to encourage citizens
- Better planning and monitoring of blood reserves
Stay tuned for updates — more is coming!
The development of these registries was carried out by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine within the framework of the «Digital Registers for Data-Driven Decision-Making» program, implemented by the East Europe Foundation as part of the DIGITAL UA HUB projects, which are supported by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH with funding from the German government.
This article was prepared by the GovTech Alliance of Ukraine (GTA UA)
