• Renewal of committee membership

After many years of service, including past chairperson, Peter Flanagan retired from the committee. Carla Dinardo, a member of the Young Professionals Council, stepped down, as did Birgit Gathof. New members are Jannison Reibero (Brazil), from the Young Professionals Council, Richard Charlewood from the New Zealand Blood Service, and Naomi Rahimi-Levene, from the Shamir Medical Center in Israel. All proposed new members were approved by the ISBT Board of directors, and the SCE website was updated.

• SCE session at the Gothenburg conference

To raise awareness of the ISBT Code of Ethics and ethical issues in transfusion medicine and cellular therapies, a “Fireside chat” interactive session was held at the Gothenburg conference. Arwa Al-Riyami, Shubha Allard, and Mindy Goldman from the SCE participated, as did Katerina Pavenski from the Clinical Transfusion Working Party. Vignettes were presented, with audience members voting with their phones on various options. The link was made between decision-making in the vignettes and principles in the Code of Ethics. There was lively discussion, and two of the audience members who participated the most came forward as being interested in the SCE, and are now members.

• SCE session at the Barcelona conference

Since the session in Gothenburg was very successful, we are planning an interactive workshop for the Barcelona meeting, which will again include vignettes and active audience participation. Presenters from the SCE will include Ratti Ram Sharma, Richard Charlewood, and Naomi Rahimi-Levene. We may also include a working party chair.

• ISBT Code of Ethics

The basic ethical principles of the code of ethics are unchanged. We are reviewing the text to add something about policies of the ISBT itself and be more inclusive of cellular therapies. Documents from other societies including the International Society for Cellular Therapies are being reviewed, and perhaps will be added as an addendum to our document and also placed on the ISBT website. Further work on the cellular therapies side will include consultation with the chair of the Cellular Therapies Working Party, and exploration of collaboration with the AABB.

• Draft Advocacy and Endorsement Policies

We continued discussion of the draft advocacy and endorsement policies and documents developed by the ISBT office, and some suggestions were provided to the ISBT office about general policies and draft forms. We also reviewed possible use of our logo for a webinar program, a good example of the practical issues involved in these requests.

• We provided a draft policy recommendation to the ISBT office about leadership in two organisations.