Highlights

We continue to develop as a group, developing new project groups and working with other key stakeholders for transfusion in Europe.

We have started a funded project in health data science. The most impactful development is the (on-going) initiative aimed at ‘Developing a Transfusion Strategy for Europe.’ Blood is most commonly transfused to patients with hematological malignancies. There are many important issues such as:

• ‘Where does the blood go, by diagnosis, and why?’
• ‘Addressing security of supply’
• ‘How does practice vary and can we change practice to be aligned to evidence-based recommendations?’

We have a vision to create a European learning health data system that combines information from blood donation through to transfusion. This will help to support the optimization of blood usage and improving patient outcomes across Europe.

A specific focus is how we can use large-scale health data from donor to recipient more effectively, in order to:

• Support patient blood management
• Improve patient outcomes in transfusion medicine and detect opportunities for medicine in general and public health management (see the PETRA project group information on our scientific and educational activities page)

We have shared expertise across multiple blood services with donors, blood establishments, clinical haematologists and transfusion specialists. We’re planning options for networking meetings with EHA and strategic funding—for example, through HORIZON.