Framing better decisions for blood safety

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Decisions about blood safety need to take many factors into account, from risks and benefits to costs, ethical issues, and stakeholder perspectives. After five years of cooperative work within the Alliance of Blood Operators (ABO), the interactive Risk-Based Decision-Making (RBDM) Framework is now available for use by blood services worldwide.

This unique tool helps blood service operators streamline processes and make responsible decisions that lead to the greatest good. Whether the scale of the blood safety decision to be made is small or large, this framework can help organise the process and assure the quality of the information used to make consistent and cost-effective decisions.

The RBDM Framework was born from discussions at the 2010 Alliance of Blood Operators (ABO) International Consensus Conference in Toronto, Canada. At that conference, participants agreed that achieving zero risk in transfusion medicine isn’t possible and the well-being of transfusion recipients should be central to any recommendations to improve blood safety decision making.

From that goal, the ABO set out to develop a collective, standardised, decision-making framework to guide blood services facing increasing complexity in blood safety decision-making driven by medical, scientific, ethical, economic, legal and public policy factors.

Alyson Svenson of the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood is one of many blood service experts involved in the project internationally.

“We’re already seeing a number of blood services using the tool for their decision-making processes,” she said. “As more examples are developed, we hope usage of the tool will increase.”

The working group for the Risk-Based Decision-Making (RBDM) Framework meets regularly and there are plans to update the framework annually.

To learn more or view the RBDM Framework, go to https://www.allianceofbloodoperators.org and click on ‘Resources’.

Photo: Part of one of the tools available in the RBDM Framework.

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