Blood Safety Information System (BSSP)

There is a severe lack of safe blood in Sub-Saharan Africa, caused by a combination of weak voluntary donor recruitment strategies, testing and component production processes and information management. The implementation of BSIS at low resource blood centres both improves information management and facilitates the adoption of good practices in donor and donation management, in line with the Africa Society for Blood Transfusion (AfSBT) accreditation requirements and recommended international good practice. BSIS also ensures that only labelled blood units that have passed all good practice safety criteria can be issued to health facilities for transfusion.

Safe blood for transfusion is categorized as an essential medicine by the World Health Organization (WHO), according to whom about 800 maternal deaths per day could be prevented if safe blood was available for transfusions. Safe blood is also used to treat cases of childhood malaria, trauma and save lives during operations. BSIS is an open source information system designed to manage donor and donation information from the point of donor registration to donation collection, through to laboratory testing, component processing and labelling, storage, and distribution to hospitals and clinics. The BSIS tool is primarily targeted for deployment in resource-limited countries and supports the Africa Society for Blood Transfusion (AfSBT) 3 step certification and accreditation process and recommended international good practice. The implementation process Jembi has designed for the implementation of BSIS follows the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) guidelines for safe implementation of technologies within blood services as well as focusing on building local capacity within the blood services to use, manage and maintain BSIS locally.

BSIS is open source and doesn’t carry with it a costly annual license fee; high cost and vendor lock-in are a large reason why current proprietary systems are not used in low resource settings. BSIS is also designed to be fit-for-purpose for low resource settings and focuses on enabling blood services to follow basic good practice work/information flows. Jembi’s implementation strategy also focuses on safe and sustainable implementation. Building local capacity to use, manage and maintain BSIS without extensive external support from service providers in the long term.