On Tues 27th June IHBDC committee members Mustafa Khan (Coordinator), Jasmine Rizvi (London Regional Ambassador) and Aimen Al-Diwani (Partnerships Lead) attended the 4th Annual NHSBT Stakeholder Meeting in Central London. It was a very fruitful day for learning about the future of NHSBT, networking, increasing exposure and discussing challenges with the executive team.
The theme was Modernising Donation to meet Patient Needs. The day was filled with presentations, speeches and table discussions. Here are some of the key points noted:
Introduction by Millie Banerjee (new NHSBT Chair)
- NHSBT is genuine open organisation that seeks to improve the lives of those it serves
- Keen to work with all stakeholders to improve NHSBT in real terms, particularly for BAME
- Event theme ‘Modernising Donation to Meet Patient Need’
Future of NHSBT by Ian Trenholm (CEO NHSBT)
Context:
- We’re all in behavioural change business: engaging with the public, donors and patients
- Since 1947 people living longer (80-90). This end of life phase become more about maintaining health not truly fixing it, e.g. chronic diseases are just being sustained for longer
- Health provision needs to strike a balance between competence and compassion. This is especially important for NHSBT as it heavily relies on volunteers, i.e. its donors (blood, organs, platelets etc) to be enable it to run its services
- Blood donation has been largely ‘transaction’. Giving tea and biscuits isn’t a good enough reward in itself to help maintain and grow motivation for donors
Trends:
- Top trend emerging is how we do marketing, i.e. making people feel special / valued
- NHSBT are exploring ways to link and embed its services with other major organisations in a similar field for mutual benefit, e.g. Boots, prompting organ donation after people do road tax (IHBDC should try and replicate this)
- Boom of technology (self-service checkouts) and commercially affordable health tech. NHSBT must leverage this and understand the changing relationship between the public and medical healthcare professionals
- NHSBT could expand to offer cost effective value added services for donors, e.g. personal information of interest, DNA mapping, mass customisation of donation texts
Agenda:
- Politics like or hate it has an impact. BREXIT for example will likely stall any NHSBT legislation changes over next 2-3 years, so any improvements we make should be non-legislative where possible
- NHSBT want to proactively work with the government to bring about NHSBT’s health outcomes:
- Know donors better
- Be able to communicate better
- Support new medical technology
- Save NHS money
- Save more lives, with less
- IT infrastructure nearly 20+years old in some cases is due a major refresh. Benefits will be realised from next month for the next 2 years and the transition should complete by end of 2018
- July 2017 to see more tailored messaging to donors
- Text messages have received huge positive response by donors
Emerging Regenerative Medicine by Dr Huw Williams (Director for Diagnostic & Therapeutic services)
- Significant progress made in this area, e.g. advance cell therapies, synthetic blood and cellular tissues
- Next year small quantities of artificial blood will be trialled into healthy volunteers
- Synthetic blood still has a long road ahead and is hence not a substitute for blood donation
- Stem cell research at the forefront, e.g. knee cartilage repair
- NHSBT well placed to support NHS therapies for the future
Keynote Guest speaker Justin Grace (Sprint Coach, British Cycling)
- Heartfelt talk of his journey in becoming a dominant force in the sport and his personal experience of how he received a liver transplant that transformed his life
- Team success proven in three ways:
- Team management / conducting
- Culture
- Individualised communication
Speed meetings:
Research
- Evidence is biggest hurdle for change
- Each business has different hurdles-cost/policy
Blood donation (Mike S)
- NHSBT sell blood to hospitals, blood price was maintained despite efficiencies in cost and that allowed for saving up for the IT project.
- 3 focus areas:
- IT refresh / change. Systems are critical and hence strong reluctance for years to resist
- Enhancing the donor experience. Digitalise future sessions by removing paperwork, cutting inefficiencies. NHSBT spends £3.5m a year on postal service of Donor Health Check forms
- Recruit more Black donors and more Asian organ donors. Being clearer in communication could potentially see the demise of the BAME term, which often confuses the public
IT
- Model is shifting towards SAAS off the shelf software services and tailored according to NHSBT’s needs
- New laptops, windows 10 & Office 365 have been rolled out to staff
- IBM & Microsoft Cloud are the providers for NHSBT cloud in the UK and Amsterdam
Organ donation
- Specialist nurses have been trained to speak to families after a loved one passes away
Director of Manufacturing & Logistics (Greg)
- Liked the idea of having fast track for large venue assessments. During venue assessments he’s happy to be involved to help IHBDC be fast tracked where needed
Assistant & Director of Marketing (Ceri R)
- Marketing is moving away from conventional methods, such newspapers to new media and functionality:
- Target key influencers, e.g. VIPs
- Social media
- Reduce inequality, e.g. include more varied imagery
- Telling more personal stories focussed to particular audiences, e.g. Asian story to Asian donors
- Content hub is being created to act as the golden source for key facts, figures and other supporting materials for marketing. IHBDC as an organisations that support NHSBT should gain access
