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Network of Community Blood Bank:
Eliminating Blood Shortage through Location Based Services.
 B G Premasudha Assistant Professor Siddaganga Institute of Technology India Dr. Shivakumar Swamy Principal Mallige college of Pharmacy India Dr. B Suryanarayana Adiga Consultant Supervisor Tata Consultancy Services India Abstract India experiences a deficit of blood, ranging 20% to 50% almost in every state. The availability of blood is one of the important requirements in treating medical emergencies; the blood banks do not maintain buffer stocks as required during that time. Thus the buffer stock is crucial for disaster management. The Network of Community Blood Bank (NCB) helps people to get the right information about the availability of blood in the current location for the sake of transfusion at their need of the hour without running from pillar to post in getting the required blood during emergency. In this paper we propose a system to find the nearest blood bank with stock details, route map and the details of donor/s in that locality during emergency through the mobile Internet. The location based service concept over the mobile internet would be the right solution, for bringing various Stakeholders under one umbrella to provide necessary services to the members, like creating a data base for blood banks, easy access to stocks of blood banks, online requisition forms to voluntary donors, the blood banks and hospitals, blood transfusion and related issue management to address the global blood related problems in coming future. 1. Introduction India's blood banking system has serious Shortcomings. The gap between demand and supply of blood is continuously widening. India has an annual requirement of approximately 5.0 million units of blood [1]. The actual collection is only approximately 3.5 million units. A study conducted by the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO)[2], regarding blood banking services in India has revealed many shortcomings, including the decentralized nature of blood services, a shortage of human, technological and financial resources and a deficit in the availability of blood, especially from voluntary donors and non-remunerated blood donors[1]. Paradoxically, very few blood banks are operating to their full capacity. Inappropriate use of blood and wastage is not an un-common occurrence. Even during an emergency, the onus is on the patient's relatives to arrange for replacement of blood. India has many blood banks, all functioning in a decentralized fashion. In the current system, there is no tool to find number of blood donors of the required blood group in current time and place, there is no interaction between blood banks, no exchange of blood or its components, or best practices, there is no integration of Web launching with all the above mentioned facilities[2]. In order to explore all these issues an efficient Network of community blood bank(NCB) management system is required, with the aim of ensuring that every patient has access to an adequate quantity of safe blood. The NCB is a web based blood bank management system with Geographic Information System (GIS). Network of Community Blood bank is a complete blood bank management solution that covers all the activities of a blood bank. There are several types of geographical analysis available for the management of health services [3]. The aim of this paper is to create a GIS application that covers some of the blood bank management issues related to Tumkur city. The application is designed to achieve the analysis of the spatial distribution of donors, which shows how GIS can be used quickly to locate the blood donors of the required blood group near to a given blood bank location on a GIS based map of Tumkur city. It creates a GIS based database to determine and visualize catchments of donors to a particular blood bank. All these are available on a web application including finding nearest blood bank with the availability of the required group of blood at right time and right place. It develops a computerized supply chain management and distribution system (DS) to collect and distribute blood from the Community Blood Bank to the hospitals. This web based blood bank service portal also provides awareness generation to facilitate the coordination between the need of blood during emergency, arrangement of blood donors and blood banks. This system will help the citizens in finding the availability of blood, service directory, FAQ for citizens, online donor registration and Awareness generation. 2. Methods 2.1 Study Area Tumkur is a district place of Karnataka in India. The city has a population of over 3 lakhs, 4 allopathic hospitals and 69 private hospitals and there are only six blood banks. One blood bank attached to Government hospital and other five are private and community blood banks. As the demand of blood is very high and there is deficient of 40-50 percent of blood, Voluntary contribution is only 25 percent. Thus there is a need for widespread of the importance of voluntary blood donation with the aim of recruiting, retaining voluntary and recognition of non-remunerated blood donors. As we often hear of patients succumbing to their injuries for want of blood. The hospitals blood bank may not be having the require blood and even if it could arrange transfusion, the blood group may not match with that of the patient. If the blood group happens to be of a very rare type, it is need less to imagine the plight of the person in need of blood. The reason being simple: right information, at the right time, in the right form is not available. So this can be handled with GIS technique to quickly locate the blood donor of the required blood group nearer to a given hospital. 2.2 Research Issues and Analysis Techniques. Blood donation and transfusion service is an indispensable part of contemporary medicine and health care. As a consequence it is of vital importance to coordinate and administer various activities involved in blood donation and transfusion services. Nevertheless, blood bank management has been recognized as a challenging task in obtaining a required blood at right time in a right place. In this paper we propose a new web based application to address issues like efficient management of blood bank services and maintenance of donor list with their location using GIS. This application is designed to be a spatial decision support system to meet blood demand throughout the city during emergency. This application provides a good example for explaining how to use GIS by blood banks, which cover three main demand related issues, a web application to maintain network of community blood bank, spatial distribution of blood donors and a future campaign decision support system. The main issue of the presented application is related to web launching of blood bank management portal called Network of Community Blood Bank. The proposed system provides enhanced functionality and efficient process design that enables the application to maintain the information of blood banks, blood campaigns, blood requests which are sent by the patients, donors, hospitals, doctors, and land marks of blood banks, blood campaigns and hospitals[4]. All of these data are linked to demand coverage and used for the second issue of this application which is related to quickly locating the blood donors of the required blood group nearer to a given blood bank location and also to determine and visualize catchments of donors to a particular blood bank on a GIS based map of Tumkur city. GIS has several techniques and functions that can be used for blood bank service planning [5]. Each of these functions can be applied on different blood bank related issues. For example, the issue of blood donor and blood bank accessibility can be modeled in GIS using simple functions such as buffer function and spatial analytical functions such as spatial interaction technique. This study has selected one major blood bank planning issues and uses GIS for analyzing these issues. The first issue related to defining blood demand location. GIS has different tools that can be used for defining any location on the map [5]. One of these tools is called on screen digitizing which is used by the present study to capture and define blood demand location at Tumkur city. MapInfo software is used by the present study to define all blood donor location. These data are collected in city area and digitized at the MapInfo application, using polygon-drawing tools that are located at editor menu. After creating the required city wards polygons, the collected attributes about blood banks and donor information are entered in to the database. The blood bank data includes the blood bank code, name of the blood bank, location or address of the blood bank, storage capacity and stock of the blood. The donor information includes name, gender, age, blood group, location, last donated date, frequency, weight, mail, phone, mobile, and address. 3. Results and Decision 3.1 Web Application to Maintain Network of Community Blood Bank Network of community Blood bank is developed with two modules like administrative part and user part. The Network of Community Blood Bank (Administrative Part) is a complete blood bank management solution that covers all the activities of a blood bank like Blood donation, transfusion service and management of blood bank service through a web application [2]. It helps in maintaining patient registration, assists in donor recruitment, maintains stock, performs blood cross – matching and monitors issues like Donor history, cross – match result, antibody profiles transfusion outcome etc. This module provides a variety of statistical reports and allows online inquires. In addition to this there is a facility available in the system to record and maintain donor information including record of blood donated; On-line availability of stock positions of all blood products, Patient inquiry gives all the details of previous transfusions. Blood products nearing expiry date can be identified and donors can be contacted in case of emergency requirements for blood. Network of community Blood Bank Management (Figure1) module addresses three issues like Donor management (Figure1), confirmation test and blood stock management. Donor Management system can maintain a database of all donors with critical information such as blood type, antigen profile, phone numbers, address, notes and donor's photo. It also displays the records of previous donations, whether the blood was used for blood products and ultimate fate is made available as and when required.   Figure 1: Blood bank management and donor management modules Confirmation Test module allows maintaining / printing of various codes used in the system, such as Blood Group, Antibodies etc. It enables entering and updating of Test results, with a provision to warn the user in the event of mismatch. The system allows the department staff to enter and maintain details regarding cross matching of blood units for each registered test. Blood Stock Management module facilitate to specify minimum / maximum stock for each blood group and also helps to maintain and update Bloodstock / inventory including the following details as and when new units are received -Bag number - Product - Blood group - Anti-body codes - Date of donation and expiry - Transfusion center / other source The system enables reservation of units for a patient and vice-versa. Reserved units are not to be allocated or issued out. Units in stock at times get spoilt, expire etc., and need to be made unavailable for use either temporarily or permanently. This system has a facility to destroy/delete expired stock. The system can enable issue, updating and reserving of transfused / returned blood unit. This system also maintains details of units of blood product, which are likely to expire on a particular date, can list out. The system is able to generate a statistics on blood usage and wastage (As shown in Figure 3).   Figue 2: Web Page to Display Usable Stock and Expired Stock Network of Community Blood Center (user Part) is a web enabled Transfusion Management system, which bridges the gap between the blood donors and the people who need blood (recipients). It provides the information of blood banks, donors, hospitals, and doctors for the users at the time of emergency. The search facility gives the blood bank information, which is nearer to the recipient (Figure 3)S. The search facility is also available for donors, doctors and hospitals. This system also intimates the future blood campaigns; interested donors can donate the blood in respective blood campaigns. 
Figure 3: Web Pages to Search Nearest Blood Bank and Donors by the user. The above web application has a database of its existing donors and receivers. These are maintained through different Management of Information System (MIS). These systems are used for finding needed information about blood donors and receivers. The present study has created a GIS application that can be used as a guide for identifying some of the benefits that blood banks will gain from using GIS at their organizations. One of the main issue related to knowing the blood donors catchment is regarding to make the collective counts of donors in the city. There are several methods that can be used in GIS for identifying location of any feature.For example, a GIS function called Geocoding can be used to create point features on a map from a table having x,y coordinates of any address.Onscreen digitization is another GIS function that can be used for data entry purposes [6]. It uses different drawing tools such as point, line and polygon tools for identifying feature location. The presented study has used digitization method for the purpose of identifying blood donors on the map. Based on the collected data, donors around the city are visualized and counted according to ward level. Figure 4 is the GIS coverage for identifying spatial distribution of donors in the wards of Tumkur city.   Figure 4: Tumkur City Map with Spatial Distribution of Donors and Nearest ‘O Negetive‘Donors to Sanjeevini Blood Bank. This step is achieved using the graduated color function that subdivides numerical data into a set of classes. The presented study has used the natural breaks method that minimizes the variance within class and maximizes the variance between classes [6]. Figure 4 Shows the resulted donor distribution around Tumkur city and finds nearest donor to a selected blood bank. Therefore the created application provides a good example for explaining how to use GIS in planning and identifying more number of donors around the city. A blood bank should dedicate to the enhancement of blood donor’s satisfaction and loyalty as well. Therefore the blood bank should provide the considerate services so as to attract more voluntary blood donors. The visualization of more number of donors through a GIS map helps in assisting the decision making procedure of the blood bank staff to frequently conduct free donation campaign or mobile blood donation campaign to provide convenience for the donors at their locality. We have done experimental test bed in our college lab, with Pentium-based PC as server with wireless adopter. Our mobile host, carried by the user being tracked, was a Pentium-based Laptop computer running Microsoft Windows XP. Mobile host was equipped with a Digital RoamAbout TM Network Interface Card (NIC), based on WaveLAN TM RF LAN technology. Using this we have made registered user to access the Network of Community Blood Bank application as Mobile Internet Service. 4. Conclusion In this paper, we explore the mechanism of computerized decision making support in blood bank information systems using GIS. The special concerns on blood donation and transfusion service are implemented in this system. An efficient blood bank management system for Tumkur district can be implemented, with the aim of ensuring that every patient has access to an adequate quantity of safe blood at their location. The management system can solve the issue of demand and wastage; and lead to self sufficiency in blood requirement. It could be replicable in other city. Network analysis can be integrated to use road based route length calculation rather than using the crow-fly distance. 5. References
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