Blood is essential in emergency medical treatment. It can only be obtained through donors. In South Africa, the supply with safe blood components remains an enormous challenge as the infection rates in the population with malaria and other diseases, are high. Even under routine conditions, only a part of the demand can be met. In the event of a crisis, the existing supply systems have shown not to be able to cope; effective crisis planning is not in place.

BISKIT is a collaborative project that aims to supply the South African population with safe and high-quality blood and blood products before, during, and after a crisis in South Africa. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), eHealth Africa and partner organizations will work together to develop the data infrastructure, information system, and user-facing demonstrator which will enable the South African health system to identify and mobilize healthy donors, and significantly improve blood logistics in the target region and increase their resilience to crisis situations

• The BISKIT application monitors donor recruitments, donations, processing, testing, transportation, storage and issuing of blood products to the receiving patient using GIS.

• The application quickly switches to emergency mode, allowing faster action and alternative release methods of blood reserves.

• It ensures visibility and optimal accountability with digital evidence for all resources and activities in the chain.

• It adapts to mobile gadgets, including tablets and smartphones.

• It integrates geographical information for the optimization of logistics processes.

• It functions offline, and can synchronize with the rest of the system when connectivity is restored.

• It provides data from multiple sources and from multiple vendors, incorporating a USSD reporting feature.

• It tracks adverse effects, temperature history, and traces the origin of donations.

• It sends feedback to donors on the use of their donations.

• It caters for quick plug-and-play in the OpenSource community through advanced API service.

• Build technical infrastructure for data collection, management, and publishing for our project partners. 

• Provide methods to access data consistent with the requirements for modeling and analysis

• Support the design and implementation of enterprise architecture for data-driven decision making that respects the existing local infrastructure, processes, and challenges

• Develop, design, and implement an information system that ensures safe blood supply to target populations

• Design and validate a mobile user tool (pilot) that helps address the deficiencies using insights from the modeling and simulation phases