BLOODLYFE — A Digital Product That Simplifies The Process of Blood Transfusion in Nigeria and Emerging Markets

ABOUT BLOODLYFE

BloodLyfe is a location-centric MedTech Solution that aids blood transfusion by pairing blood donees to blood donors. The idea to build this solution was birthed during the Design, Product, and Developer School Capstone Project.

With a roughly 200 million population, Nigeria needs up to 1.8 million units of blood every year. Still, the National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) collects only about 66,000 units per year, leaving a deficit of more than 1.7 million pints of blood, according to a 2017 report quoting the country’s health ministry. This is the problem that BloodLyfe seeks to solve.

Seeing random tweets about individuals who are in dire need of Blood Donors to save their lives or their loved ones, we decided to create a peer-to-peer solution that simplifies this process and matches donors to donees based on their location.

HOW IT WORKS?

BloodLyfe will solve all the problems in blood donation and blood transfusion. How? Blood donors and recipients will complete a simple registration process by providing their biodata, blood group, genotype, and last donation date.

If a patient needs blood, a patient relative will select a blood group to see the list of all available donors nearby with contact addresses. A health facility will test the blood donor, and transfusion will be made if the blood is safe for the patient.

THE PROCESS

The design process started with research after conceptualizing the product idea. The process was in 5 phases as follows:

• Research
• Define
• Ideation
• Designing
• Testing
• Product Delivery

This helped understand the pain points of a potential user, determine the user flow, and simplify the product feature, making it easy and seamless for a user in distress.

THE SOLUTION

BloodLyfe is not like every Blood Donation app. Instead, it’s a peer-to-peer solution, which means it has eased the blood donation process and provides a cheaper option from using the lengthy and expensive process provided by Blood Banks.

Our Solution

1. SEAMLESS BLOOD DONATION: to create a platform where blood donors and blood recipients will communicate directly.
2. HEALTHY LIFESTYLE TIPS: the solution will also give information on how donors can maintain a healthy lifestyle.
3. EMERGENCY BLOOD SHORTAGE ALERTS: Geo-targeted blood alerts let donors know if their blood type is needed within their community.

CONCLUSION

This app was designed to solve a problem, and my team is putting in efforts to make this project come to reality.

This app may seem imperfect as this is my first project as a product designer. However, I am open to corrections and ideas on making the product a better one.

To read the UX Case Study, click here.

Regards,
Oluwafemi Anthony