GIS based Donor Information System

GIS based Donor Information System

Phone calls to friends and relatives with a great deal of anxiety are quite common during medical emergencies arising out of accidents or illness or other such medical conditions. Any help from unknown quarters comes as a big relief. But one is often caught scrambling during such critical times for much-needed information, the information regarding donors.

It is needless to emphasize the plight of those looking out for blood donors especially of rare blood groups during such medical emergencies. If such is the situation with information on blood donors, imagine the nightmare of those looking for information on donors of other types such as bone marrow, kidney, liver, lungs, eyes etc not getting the required information at the appropriate time. Everyday thousands of lives are lost for want of such critical information at the appropriate time. When lives are at stake, every second counts and words cannot describe the plight of the near and dear ones, running from pillar to post in locating the donors.

Geography or GIS for that matter has never been so closer offering a helping hand in our day-today life. Web based and even GIS based blood bank/ blood donor information systems are already the order of the day. But for some reason the concept has not extended beyond blood banks and blood donors into other types of medical donors like eye, kidney, bone marrow, lung, liver donors etc. and corresponding donor banks/ facility.

“Brain death” something hitting the headlines these days refers to the irreversible end of all brain activity (including involuntary activity necessary to sustain life) due to total necrosis of the cerebral neurons following loss of blood flow and oxygenation. Brain stem death (not whole brain death) is taken to be the significant indicator of death. Brain death may result in legal death, but still with the heart beating, and with mechanical ventilation all other vital organs may be kept completely alive and functional, providing optimal opportunities for organ transplantation. Most organ donation for organ transplantation is done in the setting of brain death. In some nations (for instance, Belgium, Poland, Portugal and France) everyone is automatically an organ donor, although some jurisdictions (such as Singapore, France, or New Zealand) allow opting out of the system. Elsewhere, consent from family members or next-of-kin is required for organ donation. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_death).

With the success of organ transplantation as an effective modality of treating end stage disease of various organs, increasing numbers of organ transplants are being performed all over the world. However, this procedure requires a “donor” pool of either “living” or “cadaveric” donors. Since this pool is limited, the gap between “demand” and supply is widening, which is further hampered with the non-availability of information regarding this limited donor pool at the right time. In the context of organ donation “cadaveric” donation has largely meant “brain dead” or “heart beating” donors. Such cadaver organ donation no doubt requires a robust IT/GIS based operational support system as its backbone to effectively utilize such cadaver donors.

A final thought: For a moment let us close our eyes and imagine the plight of the near and dear ones scrambling for information on donors, during medical emergencies. How thoughtful it would be if a donor registered for eye donation breathes his last and a SMS with the donor ID to a centralised server with details regarding the place, date and time of death etc is dispatched by the kith and kin of the deceased. This SMS then triggers of a set of GIS analysis on the server based on parameters such as the list of recipients registered in the vicinity of the donor considering medical factors for organ donation along with the spatial separation between the donor, recipient and the transplantation facility. The end result is an alert to either to the recipient/ care taker/ medical facility with location details of the donor.

A new concept such as this GIS based donor information system definitely needs inputs and support from all quarters and needs to be experimented, given a deep thought to put in practice.

The donors may be living or cadaver, their hearts beating or not beating, but let our hearts beat as one for a GIS based Donor Information System!