Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Blood transfusion has health-related, economical and safety implications. In order to optimise the transfusion chain, comprehensive research data are needed. The Dutch Transfusion Data warehouse (DTD) project aims to establish a data warehouse where data from donors and transfusion recipients are linked. This paper describes the design of the data warehouse, challenges and illustrative applications. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: Quantitative data on blood donors (eg, age, blood group, antibodies) and products (type of product, processing, storage time) are obtained from the national blood bank. These are linked to data on the transfusion recipients (eg, transfusions administered, patient diagnosis, surgical procedures, laboratory parameters), which are extracted from hospital electronic health records. APPLICATIONS: Expected scientific contributions are illustrated for 4 applications: determine risk factors, predict blood use, benchmark blood use and optimise process efficiency. For each application, examples of research questions are given and analyses planned. CONCLUSIONS: The DTD project aims to build a national, continuously updated transfusion data warehouse. These data have a wide range of applications, on the donor/production side, recipient studies on blood usage and benchmarking and donor-recipient studies, which ultimately can contribute to the efficiency and safety of blood transfusion.