A real-time dashboard for optimizing blood product utilization through a FHIR-based data integration pipeline

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Operations
• Transfusion Medicine
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Inefficient blood product utilization is a major challenge in transfusion medicine.
• Manual processes for identifying unused blood units delay their return to circulation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create a real-time dashboard for identifying blood products allocated to patients who have been discharged, transferred, or deceased.
• To improve the operational efficiency of blood product management.

Main Methods:

• Harmonized clinical and laboratory data (HIS, LIS) using an Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) pipeline into Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR).
• Stored data in a structured database using a relational FHIR engine.
• Developed a Grafana dashboard visualizing data via SQL queries for a unified interface.

Main Results:

• The dashboard provides an overview of potentially releasable blood products, associated patients, and departments.
• Daily review by blood depot staff facilitates faster verification and release of unused units.
• FHIR-based analytics ensure interoperability and real-time data updates.

Conclusions:

• Structured FHIR data enables operational decision support in transfusion medicine.
• The dashboard facilitates proactive blood stock management and improved resource utilization.
• Seamless integration with existing clinical systems is achievable.