Real-time cloud system for managing blood units and convalescent plasma for COVID-19 patients

Abstract

In health care systems, blood management services are essential to saving lives. In such systems, when a unit of blood is required, if the system is not able to provide it on time, sometimes this may lead to patient death, especially in critical cases. Unfortunately, even if the required blood unit is available within the system, contradictions may occur and the required blood unit may not be allocated to critical cases on time, due to the allocation of these units to lower priority cases or due to the isolated operate of blood banks within these systems. So, to overcome these obstacles, we proposed a real-time system on a cloud, to managing blood units within the whole health care system. This system will allocate blood units depends on the deadline and the severity of the case that needs blood, in addition to the types, quantities, and position of available blood units. Where, this system eliminated the need for human intervention in managing blood units, in addition to offering the ability to easily develop the system to deal with new urgent requirements, which need new methods of managing blood units; as is happening today with the COVID-19 epidemic. This system increases the performance, transparency, reliability, and accuracy of blood unit management operations while reducing the required cost and effort.