1,5 million blood bags discarded each year due to transport and storage issues - Tridentify

GOTHENBURG, Sweden, June 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 1,5 million blood bags are discarded every year after transportation and storage problems, according to the World Health Organization, WHO.¹ Meanwhile, there is a blood shortage during operations, even though 118,5 million blood bags are altruistically donated by people all over the world,² for the sake of others.

One unit of blood can save up to three lives and can only be aggregated through human donors. 1,5 million wasted blood bags equals 4,5 million potential saved lives each year. This also means that every year, blood worth up to € 350 million goes to waste - equivalent to the cost of building a medium sized hospital. As blood bags are a scarce commodity, that have been donated by people dedicating the time and effort to help others, it is of the utmost importance that the health care system is doing everything in its power to maximize the use of them.

–  One reason for discarding blood bags is that they have become deemed unviable due to being transported at the wrong temperature. Traditional logging equipment is unfortunately unable to provide the necessary information to determine the actual status of the blood bag, which means that viable blood gets to waste, says Johan Stormlund, CEO at Tridentify.

The lifespan of a blood bag is typically not affected by a single short temperature peak. When a basic temperature logger indicates that a pharmaceutical product has exceeded a set temperature limit, the product is automatically discarded. Hence, traditional cold chain monitoring equipment is not enough - leading to waste of products with remaining shelf-life.

– We don't know how many blood bags that are used even though they should have been discarded due to low quality. But, with the new EU directive SoHO COM (2022) 338, the requirements are significantly tightened and blood centers and hospitals have a much greater responsibility to ensure the quality of blood, plasma and human tissue in the future. Therefore, Tridentify's solution can play a crucial role in meeting the new stringent SoHO directive and ensuring life-saving quality for patients, says Johan Stormlund.

At June 14 every year countries around the world celebrate World Blood Donor Day (WBDD). The event serves to raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products and to thank voluntary, unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood.³ The best way to thank them is to ensure that their blood is of use to another human being, as intended.

To reduce waste of blood bags, we need to apply real-time monitoring with exact specifications of the blood bag. Knowing where the blood is located during transit, exact temperature and, if compromised, for how long it has been outside the range of the regulated temperature span, allows us to use blood bags that would otherwise be discarded.

–  Up to 80% of all users of our real-time monitoring solution experience up to 80% less waste of valuable blood. Unlike all other solutions, Tridentify's patented tracer is programmed to the exact specifications of the biopharma, which gives it the ability to communicate the shelf life of the actual individual package it is attached to in real-time, says Johan Stormlund, CEO at Tridentify.

^[1] WHO. Global status report on blood safety and availability 2021. 2021. Accessed June 13, 2023. Available: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240051683.

^[2] WHO. Blood safety and availability. 2023. Accessed June 12, 2023. Available: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/blood-safety-and-availability.

^[3] WHO. World Blood Donor Day 2023. 2023. Accessed June 12, 2023. Available: https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-blood-donor-day/2023. 

For further information, please contact:

Johan Stormlund, CEO Tridentify
+46 734 122 668
johan.stormlund@tridentify.com