Role of instant messaging applications in Indian blood banking

Instant messaging applications (IMAs) have revolutionized the means of communication. Like various disciplines in medicine, transfusion medicine and blood banking have also utilized these applications for connecting with donors for recruitment, routine blood centre work and clinical consulting. We aim to study the pattern of usage of IMAs by the Indian blood bank community.

This was a descriptive cross-sectional survey (27 questions) of doctors and technicians working in the blood centres. The target was to collect at least 100 responses from blood bank staff. The survey was open from 28 March 2024 to 28 May 2024.

One hundred and thirty-nine out of 575 individuals dealing with blood banking responded to the survey (24% response rate). The responders were mainly doctors (85.6%), young professionals (<40 years; 53.2%) and males (53.9%). WhatsApp® on smartphones seems to be one of the most preferred ways (~95% responders) of IMAs among the Indian blood bank community. IMAs were mainly used to communicate with the blood centre staff (83%) as well as clinical counter colleagues (68.5%). More than 50% of our responders were members of more than five chat groups dealing with blood bank. IMAs were also used to disseminate knowledge, such as sharing recent guidelines (81%) and research articles (69%).

Our study demonstrates that the blood bank community has embraced the internet-based IMA (mainly WhatsApp) and uses it mainly on their mobile devices.