Data analytics: Singapore's blood donation trends during the COVID-19 pandemic and following media appeals

ABSTRACT

Background: Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused reduced donor attendance and disrupted blood collection activities. This has impacted the blood supply of many blood transfusion services (BTS). To secure the nation's blood supply, BTS resort to media appeal as an additional measure to call on potential and existing donors to come forward to donate when the blood supply is low. Singapore's Health Sciences Authority (HSA) partners with the Singapore Red Cross (SRC) to drive the awareness of blood donation and recruit donors. HSA and SRC had launched media appeals prior to the pandemic. During the pandemic, there were two media reports proactively run by the media reporters. Aims: This study aimed to gain insights into donor profiles, behaviours and blood donation trends before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and during media appeals/media reports. This was to enable HSA and SRC to develop new measures and strategies to improve donor recruitment and retention. Methods: Blood donation records from 1st January 2018 to 31st December 2020 were extracted from HSA's blood bank computer system and de-identified. Data transformation was performed using Python (version 3.7.0). Only whole blood donors with successful donations were included in this analysis. Donors were classified according to donor type and donor behaviour. Geospatial analysis was conducted to identify geographical patterns of blood donation. Descriptive analyses were carried out using Tableau Desktop (version 2021.4.3) for data visualization. Results: A total of 72,536 and 74,683 donors donated in 2018 and 2019 respectively. This declined by 4.9% to 71,054 donors in 2020. Despite this, the number of whole blood donations increased from 116,789 in 2019 to 117,272 in 2020. Donation frequency increased from 1.56 in 2019 to 1.65 in 2020, with an 1.4% increase in new donors in 2020. The proportion of donors of Chinese ethnicity increased in 2020. Donors aged 16 to 19 years old drastically declined by 34% in 2020. There was a shift in donor behaviour with majority (78.3%) donating at blood banks as compared to the pre-pandemic period (64.4% in 2019). There were two media appeals (Sep 2018, Dec 2019) and two media reports (Feb 2020, Jun 2020). There was a spike in donors by 65.7% and 72.9% in 2018 and 2019, respectively after media appeals. There was a large spike in donors by 215% after the February 2020 media report and a 27.3% increase after the June 2020 media report. 49.7% and 39.7% of new donors who responded to media appeals returned to donate the following year. The data analytics insights and recommendations from this study were presented at the HSA-SRC Steering Committee and the Donor Recruitment & Retention Workgroup in March 2022. These included a recruitment and retention focus on youth donors, encouraging appointment bookings after donation, leveraging fixed sites and donor mobile app to retain donors etc. Summary/Conclusions: Data analytics is pivotal in helping HSA and SRC to better understand blood donation trends during the COVID- 19 pandemic and following media appeals/reports. New measures and strategies were developed to better engage donors so that they would return to donate and donate more regularly. Predictive analytics and data modelling could be explored as additional tools to secure the nation's blood supply. These will increase the resilience of the Singapore's National Blood Programme and ensure a sustainable blood supply to meet the increasing blood demand.