Using Visual Analytics to Optimize Blood Product Inventory at a Hospital's Blood Transfusion Service

Jaber Rad, Jason G. Quinn, Calvino Cheng, Samina Raza Abidi, Robert Liwski, Syed Sibte Raza Abidi

Abstract: A Blood Transfusion Service (BTS) must manage its inventory to meet clinical demand for blood products, whilst ensuring that there is minimal wastage. Reducing wastage due to discards is challenging as a discard is due to the stochastic lifecycle of the blood unit, as opposed to outdates which are related to the expiry date. In this paper, we present an interactive Blood Inventory Management Dashboard (BIMD) using advanced visual analytics methods to monitor three blood products—i.e., red blood cells, platelets, and plasma—and provide BTS staff information about (a) current inventory with alerts for blood units that are potentially heading for a discard, and (b) retrospective lifecycle patterns of all blood units to probe the underlying causes for discards.