An intelligent system for blood donation process optimization - smart techniques for minimizing blood wastages

Blood transfusion is a continuous demand, as it is widely required for many medical surgeries and critical operations. Therefore, there is a need to manage the whole process of supplying blood from blood donors to the hospitals and transfusion centers. Many researchers were recently interested in the operations and supply chain management of blood products, they considered the operations and supply chain management of blood products for the purpose of minimizing the blood wastage. As a result of the the inverse relationship between blood donations and blood products demand, more occasional blood shortages can be expected. This research proposes an intelligent system that entails the recruitment of donors that are available to donate blood products on a short notice. The proposed system optimizes the blood donation process by preventing blood shortages and minimizing the wastage of blood units with regards to expiration, and proves promising results. A set of optimization equations have been built for optimizing the process of blood donation to reduce the blood wastage and prevent blood shortage. It considers as well the new insights from the medical literature on the deterioration of stored blood products, as the use of older red blood cells is linked to poorer clinical outcomes.