Improving Canada's blood network using operational research

Introduction: Canadians spend more than $1B annually on the collection, production, testing, and distribution of blood. Originally founded to manage Canada's blood supply chain, Canadian Blood Services’ (CBS) mandate now includes transfusable blood products, coordinating Canada's fractionated protein product supply, managing the national stem cell registry and cord blood bank, and overseeing organ and tissue donation throughout Canada. Since 2011, I have held a joint appointment at Dalhousie University and CBS as a research engineer. Over this time, my lab has built a portfolio of projects that has impacted the provision of health care to Canadians and has accumulated significant expertise in the application of operational research models to blood supply chain issues. Objectives: The long-term objectives of this research program are to advance the application of operations research tools into novel areas of the blood supply chain, to build new methods for solving complex real-world blood supply chain issues and to create tools that will assist scientists and policy makers undertake high-quality research in this field. We propose three lines of investigation with the following short-term objectives. 1)To integrate optimization methods into our existing supply chain modelling framework to foster improved decision making, specifically related to the introduction of low titre O whole blood (LTOWB) into the Canadian formulary and to create a procedure for setting online ordering guidelines for hospitals. 2)To create re-usable, extensible, open-source simulation software objects for elemental modelling of blood collection and production processes and to make such tools available to the research community. These objects will be tested on projects for simulating donor flow in blood collection clinics and for processing pathogen reduced platelets. Software objects will be released as libraries to external researchers using open-source software development platforms such at Git and PyPI. 3)To develop a simulation framework for evaluating policy decisions related to Canada's adult stem cell registry, based on Canadian data, and integrating donor/recipient matching into evaluation of stem cell donor recruitment strategies. We will build an online matching portal, populate it with Canadian data, and test its application to the Canadian Adult Stem Cell registry to determine whether it is better to recruit rare Canadian donors for the international market or concentrate on recruiting populations that are most likely to match to Canadian patients. Impact: This proposal outlines a plan to build on an existing collaboration with CBS to create a research program that adds to the literature, provides a training platform for highly qualified personnel, and contributes to the health of all Canadians.