Donor Blood Management: A Complementary Framework to Patient Blood Management

Blood donation is a generous act that saves lives. However, the journey of the donated blood from collection to patient benefit is complex, and donor value may be reduced or lost through collection and processing losses, inventory wastage, expiry, handling errors, inappropriate clinical utilisation and incidents. Patient Blood Management (PBM) has transformed transfusion practice by promoting evidence-based blood use, yet no equivalent donor-centred framework exists to protect donor value across the full donation-to-transfusion pathway. We propose Donor Blood Management (DBM), built on four interconnected pillars: (i) Collection and processing optimisation, (ii) inventory optimisation, (iii) appropriate utilisation and (iv) haemovigilance and improvement. DBM promotes shared accountability among blood services, hospitals, clinicians and regulators to reduce avoidable losses and maximise the benefit of every donation. We also propose Donor-to-Recipient Value Yield (DRVY) as a stewardship metric to measure the proportion of donated blood ultimately transfused appropriately. DRVY is not intended to replace existing vein-to-vein data infrastructure but to provide a standardised, quality-improvement interpretation of linked donor, component and recipient data, complementing PBM within a donor-centred framework. Trial Registration: The authors have confirmed clinical trial registration is not needed for this submission.