There have been four meetings, one held in person in Milan (June 2, 2025), the others held by teleconference, on Oct 8, 2025, Dec 17, 2025, and Feb 4, 2026, in addition to a subgroup planning meeting prior to the workshop in Milan.

The topics covered included:

• Renewal of committee members
• SCE interactive sessions at the Milan and Kuala Lumpur conferences
• Terms of reference and annual committee report
• ISBT Code of Ethics
• Draft Advocacy and Endorsement Policies, suggestions
• Relationship with industry
• ISBT Academy funding of applications for commercial speakers
• Possibility of setting up an ISBT ethics approval process for studies

Renewal of committee membership

Two new members, Marion Vermeulen from South Africa and Satyam Arora from India have joined the committee, both are ISBT Board members. Their membership was approved by the ISBT Board of directors. After the Milan meeting, 3 long-serving committee members, Ratti Ram Sharma, Shubha Allard, and Birgit Gathof retired from the committee.

We now have 10 members, 3 of whom are on the Board of Directors, as stipulated in the terms of reference of the SCE.

SCE session at the Milan 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 again held at the Milan conference. Speakers were Shirley Owusu-Ofori (who also moderated), Nelson Hirokazu Tsuno, Jean-Baptiste Thibert, and Birgit Gathof. 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. After this session, all SCE members have presented at a workshop session, with the exception of our Young Professional’s Council member (Jannison) and our new members.

SCE session at the Kuala Lumpur conference

Since the sessions at several previous conferences were successful, we are planning an interactive workshop for the KL meeting, which will again include vignettes and active audience participation. Participants will include Richard Charlewood (moderator), Jennie Haw and Rachel Thorpe from the Donors and Donation WP (consent and genotyping), Satyam Arora (pediatric transfusion and transplantation), and Mindy Goldman (update to Code of Ethics).

Article for Transfusion Today

An article was written for Transfusion Today, summarizing vignettes from the Gothenburg and Barcelona workshops, including interactive questions online. The article assisted in raising awareness and attendance for the workshop in Milan.

ISBT Code of Ethics

Several changes were proposed by SCE committee members. The SCE draft was then sent for review to ISBT working parties and the Board of Directors. Over 30 comments and suggestions were received and collated into one document (Google docs). We will now accept changes where there is substantive agreement, and have further discussions, including in our interactive session in KL, on areas where there is a lack of alignment.

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 discussed endorsement of a specific guideline submitted to the ISBT Board.

Relationship with Industry, survey of working parties

Several practical issues were submitted for discussion by the ISBT Executive Director, including ISBT Academy funding for commercial speakers at educational events. Another issue was participation of industry members in working parties, which takes many different forms. A survey was developed by Nelson and Satyam, refined by the ISBT office, and sent to working party chairs to complete. Responses were received back and collated by Nelson and Satyam, who are participating in further evaluation of this issue by the Board of Directors.

Discussion about setting up an ISBT ethics approval process

This issue was brought to the committee by Nelson, after a working party study manuscript, submitted to a non-transfusion medicine journal, led to questioning from the journal editor about approval of the study by an ethics committee. Journal editors from 3 transfusion medicine journals were consulted. After discussion, the SCE recommended against setting up an ethics review mechanism for studies. Since this issue had also been brought forward by another working party member, the SCE discussions were summarised in an article for Transfusion Today, and hopefully will be included in the April issue.