In Focus
The Big Data Working Party
Introduction
The increasing availability of large, high-quality data in transfusion medicine offers new opportunities to improve both donor and recipient health.
The ISBT has therefore established the Big Data Working Party to connect researchers using large-scale databases and biobanks to address important questions across transfusion medicine and public health. The Working Party brings together expertise in epidemiology, transfusion science, and omics technologies. By linking donation and transfusion data with molecular and clinical information, we can examine how donation affects donor health and how donor characteristics influence patient outcomes. Such integration may help refine transfusion practice and guide more individualised approaches to care.
A distinctive strength of donor-based research lies in its cost-efficiency. At every donation, blood samples and data are collected. When merged with other healthcare data, a highly efficient research system is created. This provides a powerful foundation for both transfusion-specific and broader public health research.
Importantly, this approach aligns with donor motivation. Blood donors contribute out of a desire to help patients. By including them in well-designed studies, we extend that altruism to benefit society more broadly. Donor-based research has already provided key insights, from studies of iron metabolism in donors, to evidence that donor factors can affect transfusion outcomes, and to public health applications such as infection monitoring and large-scale genetic research. These examples show how research embedded in the blood donation system can inform public health while strengthening the scientific basis of transfusion practice.
The Big Data Working Party provides a forum for collaboration, data harmonisation and shared development. In the coming years, we aim to connect national initiatives, encourage subgroup formation and promote interoperability between data systems. By working together and making the most of existing donor infrastructures, we can strengthen transfusion medicine, contribute to personalised medicine, and advance public health research, fulfilling blood donors’ wish to help patients and society alike.
