An update to the HLA Nomenclature Guidelines of the World Marrow Donor Association, 2012.

For more than two decades, international cooperation and information technology have been playing key roles in the identification of suitable unrelated donors and cord blood units for hematopoietic SCT. To ensure consistent coding and interpretation of HLA data among the linked computer systems, the World Marrow Donor Association has standardized the extensions of the World Health Organization (WHO) Nomenclature for factors of the HLA system applied in practice. The first version of this report published in 2007 has become the reference for the technical validation of HLA information on donors and patients in the context of search and matching and is used by registries of volunteer unrelated hematopoietic stem cell donors and umbilical cord blood banks throughout the world. The present update became necessary after the major revision of the WHO HLA nomenclature in April 2010. It now covers issues arising when alleles are withdrawn or renamed because of the continuous updating of the WHO HLA nomenclature. In addition, formal validation and interpretation rules for the so-called 'multiple allele codes' have been added.

Information technology and the role of WMDA in promoting standards for international exchange of hematopoietic stem cell donors and products.

Nearly half of the unrelated hematopoietic SCTs facilitated worldwide involves an exchange of products between countries. The process is information intensive and requires coordination through regional hubs of complex data transactions of demographic, clinical and genetic information, laboratory samples and results. Each registry has developed its own unique systems for representing data and process leading to transplantation. The WMDA Information Technology Working Group was formed in the autumn of 2001 as a forum to discuss and develop standards for information technology (IT) in support of hematopoietic stem cell registries. Its membership includes experts in IT from the WMDA member registries. The group has focused its standardization efforts on three areas: Standardized reference data sets for validation and plausibility controls for HLA and other data domains. Matching algorithm standards for determining histocompatibility. Communication standards between registries.