project report - part 3 - full report conclusion repaired)
TRANSCRIPT
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Role of Blood Banks in Blood Donation
Blood is a vital biological product that can only be procured by donation.
Though science has made tremendous strides in a variety of areas, scientists are
still decades away from producing artificial blood – if possible at all. Against an
annual requirement of 4 crore units of blood, India is able to collect only 40 lakh
units of blood of which only million units are from voluntary blood donors while
the remaining are from family/replacement donors or suffer from non-availability
of blood. [1]
For a safe blood service in our country, where comprehensive laboratory tests
are neither possible nor pragmatic, it is best to switch over to 100% voluntary
donations, as it is now established that only voluntary non-remunerated blood
donation is the safest. Thus, to enhance blood safety, it is necessary to focus on
motivating non-remunerated blood donors and phasing out replacement donors. [1]
Blood banks have a major task of collecting blood from donors, monitor blood
quality and supply, and distribute blood and blood components to hospitals within
the network. The timely delivery of the required amount of blood to the donor is
critical to save the life of a patient. For blood banks to achieve 100% voluntary
donations, it is necessary that the blood banks maintain some sort of
communication with the first time donors, because it is easier to convince someone
who has already donated blood to donate again. In a populous country as India, it
should be readily possible for blood supply to meet demand. But the reality is
painfully different.
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1.2 Problems Faced in Blood Donation
In a populous country such as India, where, if every eligible citizen can
donate just one unit of blood every year, there could be surplus of blood, there
exists a pathetic state where not even 10% of the demand could be met by the
supply. There exists a variety of reasons for this problem.
1.2.1. Lack of Public Awareness
Often, people take the availability of blood in blood banks to be granted. But
the truth is that certain rare blood groups like AB- are almost always not available
in the stock of blood banks and their need is usually satisfied only by
family/replacement donors. Searching for a replacement donor is a tedious and
time consuming process and could cost a precious life if a suitable donor cannot be
found at the right time.
1.2.2. Unfounded Fears among The General Public
A major reason for reluctance among blood donors are the various myths
surrounding blood donation – that it is not a safe process and that donating blood
makes a person physically weak. On the contrary, there are no side effects due to
blood donation and ironically, regular donation is found to be healthier for the
donor.
1.2.3. Inability to Maintain Regular Donors
Usually, blood banks collect the details of first time donors from blood
donation camps and contact them again only during the time of another emergency.
Thus, due to lack of constant touch with the blood bank, the first time donors lose
interest in further donating blood. Also, it becomes impossible for the blood banks
to acknowledge the selfless contribution of each and every donor, every time. This
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may cause a lack of satisfaction to the donor, who may refrain from any future
donations.
1.2.4. Privacy Concerns of the Donor
One of the major complaints of any donor in sharing his/her contact details
to the blood banks is their alleged loss of privacy. Most people do not prefer to be
disturbed at the time of work or holidays. And if they are continuously requested
by blood banks to come and donate their blood, they may get irritated, and in some
cases, they may lose any further interest in donating blood.
1.3 Need for a Website
It has been noted from the previous section that vital to achieving 100%
blood donations are: maintaining an optimum blood donor – blood bank
relationship, creating awareness among donors of the necessity for voluntary blood
donation, assuring the donors that their privacy is valued and acknowledging the
donors’ contribution by some means during every donation.
In fact, the points mentioned in 1.2.3 and 1.2.4 may seem a bit contradictory:
the former alleges that the blood banks do not maintain regular/proper contact with
the donors, while the later alleges that they disturb the donors too much. The point
to be noted is that while maintaining some kind of touch with the donors is
necessary, so that the donors do not forget about the blood banks altogether, the
only time the blood banks contact the donors should not be at the time of search for
a replacement donor.
Another point to be noted is the medium by which the blood banks should
keep in touch with the donors. It is obvious that to spread awareness and to assure
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donor privacy, telephone contact is not the ideal way. The easiest and most
effective means of communication that we have decided to use for this purpose is a
website. Though it has its own fair share of merits and demerits, the merits
outweigh the demerits by a large margin, as will be discussed later in the report.
1.4. Website Specifications
The following software and scripting languages were used for creating the
website:
1.4.1 Frontend
The front end is responsible for collecting input in various forms from the
user and processing it to conform to a specification the back end can use. In many
ways, it is similar to an Operating System. The frontend of our website uses a
combination of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS), Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), Sequence Query Language (MySQL),
JavaScript and Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) programming
languages.
1.4.2 Backend
The backend of our project uses Joomla, which is a free and open source
content management system (CMS) for publishing content on the World Wide
Web. We have chosen Joomla because of the fact that it is an open source CMS,
which would mean a wider range of flexibility and affordable features for our
website.
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1.5 Use of Social Networking Plug-Ins
This project makes use of two major social networking plug-ins such as
Twitter and Facebook plug-ins. This is because a major percentage of voluntary
blood donors are in the age group 18-40 and it is easy to reach them through these
social networking sites. Facebook alone has an estimated user base of 20 million in
India and growing. Hence, to enable a larger reach for the website, the use of social
plug-ins has become a necessity.
1.6 Project Outline
Chapter 2 gives a brief about the literature surveys which were taken during
the course of the project.
Chapter 3 deals with the role of blood banks, the problems faced by them,
their current method of blood collection, the problems associated with the current
method of blood collection and the proposed suggestion to eliminate these
problems.
Chapter 4 details the proposed solution: the reasoning for the solution, the
need for creation of a communication channel, the use of social networking, the
features of the website and the merits and demerits of the proposed solution.
Chapter 5 contains the details regarding the softwares and languages used
for the site coding and the detailed explanation of various blocks.
Chapter 6 explains the site test results and scope for further work in the area.
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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Wijai Boonyanusith, Phongchai Jittamai, "The Development of Web-
Based System for Blood Requisition within Blood Supply Chain" [1]
In this paper, the authors have developed a website which has the updated value
of units of blood available in the various blood banks in Thailand. Here, whenever
a hospital is in need for blood, they can enter the type of blood and the website
uses the distance and blood unit availability criteria to refine its search results. The
paper provides a useful solution for effective blood distribution for a small country
such as Thailand where the daily blood requirement is only 1500 units of blood.
Hence, blood distribution is more important than blood collection. Since we deal
with an Indian scenario in mind, the collection of blood is a more challenging
problem. In our project, we have taken only the idea of creation of a website in
mind from this paper.
2.2 B. Spyropoulos, M. Botsivaly, A. Tzavaras and P. Spyropoulou, “Towards
Digital Blood-banking” [4].
In this paper, a universal method to digitize blood banking has been
proposed. The system is designed to record, on-line or manually, the annual human
and material resources employed in a Blood-Bank that is equipment cost, reagents
and disposable material consumption, building-leasing, energy, and infrastructure-
maintenance expenditures, and finally manpower employed. An in house
developed algorithm enables the allocation of the input resources consumption to
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the final Blood-products administered during the same period, in order to create a
reliable cost per unit approximation. Though the system could prove advantageous
in the long run, in an extremely populous country as India, it is not practically
applicable.
2.3 Ramesh Singh, Preeti Bhargava, and Samta Kain, “Smart Phones to the
Rescue: The Virtual Blood Bank Project” [5].
The Virtual Blood Bank project in Delhi uses smart phones to build a
pervasive network that gives people instantaneous information about available
blood donors in their vicinity. Donors register with the service through their mobile
devices, specifying their blood type and contact information in a donor application.
The General Packet Radio Service supports network communications between
mobile devices and the server. The server stores information about the available
blood supply in a central data repository. People who seek blood also communicate
with the server through their mobile devices, specifying their blood type and
current location in a subscriber application. The server matches the blood type and
location with the profiles of registered donors or blood banks, retrieves the
information, and sends it to the seeker via GPRS. The main problem associated
with such a kind of implementation is the lack of privacy for donors. The scheme
has been implemented over a small scale only and if, in the future, the donor age
and gender are made publicly available for everyone, it may prove advantageous
for perverts and pranksters to pull off a false alarm, trying to exploit the system.
Moreover, this scheme is mainly concentrated only in finding replacement donors.
2.4 S. Thomas, A. Osuntogun, J. Pitman, B. Mulenga, and S. Vempala,
“Design and Deployment of a Blood Safety Monitoring Tool” [12].
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This paper describes the design and implementation of a web-based tool to
monitor the collection, screening and distribution of blood in developing countries.
This project makes use of a centralized database and an online interface for
certified users to enter and track data. It focuses on users in 14 different countries
worldwide with varying levels of internet access and technical support. It provides
a comprehensive study of results from a usability study, formulate relevant design
principles and discuss prospects for long-term sustainability. Usability testing of
the initial prototype using scripts written in PHP and MySQL database tables had
indicated that, in general, the application and its interface were suitably easy to
use. None of the tasks were rated as difficult or very difficult by any user. Hence,
for our project, we have also decided to use PHP and MySQL. It is important to
note that, while this paper deals with blood testing, our project work deals with
blood collection.
2.5 “Framework for performance engineering of workflows: a blood bank
case study System Sciences” [13].
This paper addresses the performance engineering of the total information
system consisting of both the information system and those who use it. The
paper identifies certain critical areas where the introduction of an information
system actually delayed, instead of advancing the speed of operations. For our
project, we had ensured that all our project decisions do not delay any of the
existing blood bank operations and hence we have confined our project only to
the blood collection phase.
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CHAPTER 3
BLOOD BANKS AND BLOOD COLLECTION
3.1 Introduction
This chapter deals with the following topics in detail.
Role of blood banks in blood donation.
Problems faced by blood banks.
Current method of blood collection and its demerits.
Suggested method for blood collection – its merits and demerits.
3.2 Role of Blood Banks
Blood banks face the major task of collecting, testing, storing and
distributing blood and blood products. The following sections define each of these
processes in detail:
3.2.1 Blood Collection Blood collection is the first function of a blood bank. It
involves extracting a certain amount of blood – usually around 450 ml – from a
voluntary donor only. Improper donor incentives and coercion, which could alter
the truthfulness of some donors, are prohibited. Each individual blood donor is
required to read information about blood safety and is encouraged to leave, without
explanation, if he or she recognizes that giving blood would be inappropriate. This
is done to eliminate donors who are at a potential risk for HIV, hepatitis and other
infectious diseases from donating blood. Any donor can donate blood only once in
90 days, for health reasons. Donors are given a form to be filled and their details
are collected by blood banks through this form. Most blood banks in Chennai
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maintain only files from which data are verified incase of any clarification in
future. Only a handful of blood banks have the practice of maintain a soft copy of
the details of the donors and among these, only very few blood banks actually
update their soft copy every day. This is because the excessive work load on the
blood banks to test, store and distribute the blood and components leave them with
little time – if any – to create and update a database. Thus, blood collection
operation is a disorganized process with a lot of scope for improvement in an
Indian scenario.
3.2.2 Blood Testing and Component Separation:The blood thus obtained from
donors is subjected to a series of 8 tests in order to ensure that it is free of
infections such as HIV, Hepatitis, etc. which can be transmitted through blood
transfusion. It is compulsory by Indian Law to save blood test results if any tests
turn up positive results. The donors are also to be informed of the same through
counselors from the blood bank, according to the National Blood Policy. If all the
tests are negative, then the blood can be stored as it is or separated into
components like platelets, WBCs, etc and then stored.3.2.3 Blood Storing: The
tested blood is usually stored in blood bank refrigerators of capacity 50-60
standard blood bags each 450 ml in volume. The blood should be kept in blood
bank refrigerator at 4-6°C ± 2°C. The expiry of the blood is normally 35/42 days,
depending on the type of blood bags used. Since government has stipulated strict
guidelines on blood storage, it is often a standardized procedure and cannot be
changed or modified.3.2.4 Blood and Blood Component Distribution: First
In and First Out (FIFO) policy, whereby blood closer to expiry date is used first, is
used in blood distribution. Patients' blood grouping and cross matching should
invariably be carried out before issue of blood. A proper record of this should be
kept. Blood will be distributed if and only if the seeker carries a doctor’s
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prescription requesting the same and a sample of the patients’ blood. The
distribution of blood is to be carried out on a non- profit basis only, meaning the
blood bank selling the blood to a person must not seek any amount more than the
government prescribed rate.3.3 Problems Faced by Blood Banks In this
section, we would discuss the various problems faced by blood banks over the
course of the four steps of the process of blood transfusion discussed in the
previous section. It is to be noted that most problems are as a result of blood
collection, which is not surprising because NACO has not stipulated any guidelines
on this step.3.3.1 Reluctance of Donors It is a sad fact that in a country as
populous as India, there is a lack of availability of donors. Hence, reluctance
among donors serves as the most important reason why India is suffering from an
acute shortage of blood and blood packets. This reluctance stems from both fear
and wrong notions about blood transfusion.3.3.2 Inability to Retain One-Time
Donors One-time donors are those donors who have donated blood for the
first time during blood donation camps or along with their friends who may be
regular donors. They are a great potential source of future donors: with proper
guidance and motivation, they can be made aware of the great social service that
they do by just allocating a few minutes of their time every 3 months. But,
unfortunately, the blood banks have too many other duties to perform: to test, store
and distribute blood that they do not tap into these potential future donors.3.3.3
Inability to Predict Demand The demand for blood is almost always
unpredictable: a massive natural disaster could cause a sudden spurt in rise of the
demand for blood. Even the daily requirement of blood is not constant; hence the
individual blood banks usually have their own target of the number of voluntary
blood donations they would like to receive per day. Even this target is difficult to
reach for many blood banks. 3.3.4 Lack of Communication
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Between Blood BanksThis is another sad problem concerning blood banks. Blood
banks are not willing to share the details of the available blood units in their stock
with each other: especially the government blood banks are unwilling to share their
blood stock level with private ones. Such lack of cooperation also reduces the
efficiency of the functioning of these blood banks.3.3.5 Heavy Mismatch between
Demand and Supply Due to all the above said reasons and more, there exists a
great negative mismatch between supply and demand. This mismatch also causes a
strain on the functioning of the blood banks, because often they have to turn down
the request for blood for patients.3.4. Current Method of Blood CollectionFrom
the earlier section, it is clear that the functioning of blood banks has been heavily
set back due to the first step in the process: blood collection. All the other sections
have been almost standardized by the National AIDS Control Organization
(NACO), so it would not wise to suggest changes in the functioning of the areas of
blood testing, storage and distribution. Moreover, it is certain that if there were
sufficient blood available in the first place, then the other problems become trivial.
But the blood collection aspect of blood donation is an intangible one: it is not
possible to know exactly how much blood is enough. More than the prospect of
facing a deficit of blood, it is more disastrous for a blood bank to face a situation
where they would have to dispose of the unused blood – it would mean a loss of
valuable time and money for the blood bank. Keeping all these factors in mind, let
us see the various sources of blood collection for the various blood banks in
India.3.4.1 Voluntary Blood Donation by Regular DonorsCertain regular
generous donors have a habit of donating blood once in 3 months. Most of them
prefer to visit a particular blood bank and sometimes, they convince a few of their
friends and bring them to the blood banks as well. Some regular donors often form
an unofficial group and visit blood banks as a group. Almost exclusively, these
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donors are the only reliable sources of assured blood supply to the blood
banks.3.4.2 VBD From CampsBlood Banks often conduct camps at various
educational institutions and work places to maintain their blood collection level.
Quite often students and employees genuinely participate actively in the camps and
donate their blood willingly. Sometimes, the donation maybe a result of peer-
pressure but what these camps ensure is a first-time exposure of blood donation to
the donors. Often, it is the fear of the needle piercing the body during blood
donation that keeps most donors away from donating blood. Once the donors
realize that the needle piercing ritual is not as painful as they had imagined, their
fear disappears and they become potential donors for further donations.
3.4.3 Role of College Students The college students are, without doubt, the major
source of blood to the blood banks. Many regular donors at the present could have
started donating blood since their college days. Another reason why college
students form a potential donor base is their open mindedness. Unlike any other
section of the society, they are willing to donate blood with no expectations, are
not afraid of donating blood due to fear or any other baseless reasons. Also, it is
easy to reach college students: unlike the working class people who are not willing
to be disturbed with a request for blood, college students are often willing to
donate blood just at a request of a phone call or an SMS.3.4.4 Role of Corporate
BodiesThe next most important source of blood donation is the working class
people. But they have their own time constraints and work demands and so, it is
difficult for them to be readily available for answering requests for being a
replacement donor. But they form a potentially good source for voluntary donation.
They readily donate blood at the times of blood camps conducted by their
respective corporate bodies as well. Hence, by some means, if they could develop
the habit of regularly donating blood, along with their peers at office, it could
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contribute a great deal to bridge the gap between blood supply and demand. What
they lack is the proper drive and motivation to donate blood.
3.5 Problems in Current Method of Blood Collection From the discussion in
sections 3.2 and 3.3, it has been established that the problems faced by the blood
banks are mainly in the blood collection area and that by properly motivating the
school and college students and the employees of the various corporate bodies. In
this section, we will discuss the various problems faced by the blood banks in the
current method of blood donation.3.5.1 Lack of Proper Communication at
Camps Blood camps happen often in educational institutions and corporate
bodies where there is usually a particular time allocated for blood to be collected.
And since these places are located at city outskirts, the blood banks have to carry
an estimated amount of blood bags and other necessary equipments for collecting
blood. Because of the lack of time and materials, the people from the blood banks
are more concerned with the proper collection of blood than anything else. Hence,
though there are many potential first time donors, there is not a proper means of
communication between the blood banks and blood donors. In fact, the only means
of communication between the two is the consent form being filled out by those
who donate. Often, girl students are reluctant to share their contact information and
hence it is not possible that all the information presented in these forms is
completely accurate. Hence, this causes a lack of reliability of the data acquired by
the blood banks from these camps. 3.5.2 Lack of Follow-Up Action to Retain
Donors The forms filled out by donors during blood donation contain a
question asking “Are you willing to be contacted in future for donating your
blood?” From the response of the donors for this question, the blood banks contact
the donors at the times of an emergency. Other questions like “Have you donated
blood before?” and “How many times have you donated blood?” helps the blood
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banks assess the possible donors who would be willing to donate blood again. The
more times a donor has donated their blood, the more is the possibility of him/her
donating blood again. But the problem with this method of filtering is that first
time donors are considered as a last option only – that is, only after all the regular
donors have been called and found to be unavailable only, does the blood banks
consider calling the one-time donor. This causes the effect where the regular
donors keep getting called regularly, whereas the non regular donors are usually
not called. Hence the regular donor base remains at a constant level only: there is
no marked increase in the rise of regular donors in any of the blood banks that we
had visited in the last few years.3.5. Proposed Suggestion Our proposed
suggestion to meet this big problem faced by blood banks – blood collection - is to
employ the use of a website, combined with social networking features, so as to
attract a large mass of people, whom in turn, can invite their friends to join our
website, so as to enable a wider reach to the website. The website will focus on the
need to achieve hundred percent voluntary blood donations.3.5.1 Need for a
Communication Channel between Blood Banks and Voluntary Donors From
the above discussions, it is clear that there is often no means of communication
between the blood banks and blood donors. The only times the blood banks contact
the blood donors, are usually, at the times of an emergency. There is more chance
for the donor to not agree to donate than to agree because he cannot associate
himself with the blood bank or its needs. If, instead, the donor has some idea about
the blood needs of the blood bank and how much his contribution is useful to the
general public, then the donor will be more ready to agree to donate blood. Hence,
there is a need for a channel that educates to the general public of the need for
blood donation.3.5.2 Donor Satisfaction It is general human tendency to
expect appreciation for the good that we do. Often, blood donors do not receive
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their due appreciation, due to a variety of reasons discussed in the previous section.
This website serves as a portal to also appreciate the contribution of blood donors
by thanking them each time they agree to donate. The donors can proudly post
when they have donated blood in their Facebook walls. Such small things go a long
way in helping achieve donor satisfaction, which is vital to ensure regular
donors.3.5.3 Donor Privacy There are a variety of websites that help people
search for prospective donors in their area. But many among these publicly display
the contact information of donors, which could be potentially misused. Thus, a
main objective of our website is to ensure complete donor privacy - the donor’s
contact information is displayed only if the donor is willing to display it. Also, to
register into the site, one needs to compulsorily enter only their name and e-mail
id. No other personal information is sought for.3.5.4 Advantages The
advantages of creating a website as the means of communication between a donor
and a blood bank are:The donor can login and log out at will. Unlike phone calls
and SMS, there is no actual disturbance to the blood donor.
Since college students are the biggest source of voluntary blood
donation, there could not be a better way than a social networking site
to promote the cause of blood donation to them.
The website contains a doubt module which can be used by the donors
to post their queries regarding blood donation and to get a suitable
answer.
The website allows for social networking plug in, using which the
donors can invite their friends in social networking sited like Facebook
and twitter to join, which will help increase the reach of the website.
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3.5.5 Disadvantages
The disadvantages of creating a website as the means of
communication between a donor and a blood bank are:
The reach of Internet in India, though phenomenal, has reached only a
small percentage of the total population.
Penetration in rural areas could be difficult.
3.6 Conclusion
Thus, in this chapter, we have discussed in detail, the roles of a blood bank
and also we have mentioned that the core problem faced by blood banks is blood
collection which is causing a severe deficit in the blood needs of our country. We
have also emphasized on the need for awareness and motivation among the general
public to donate blood. We have proposed a website as a solution for this problem.
Considering that youth are the biggest source for blood donation, we have also
proposed that adding a Facebook plug in to the site can help lure them in good
numbers. In the succeeding chapter, we will discuss in detail about the proposed
solution.
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CHAPTER 4
PROPOSED SOLUTION
4.1 Introduction
This chapter discusses in detail about the proposed solution to help achieve
hundred percent voluntary blood donations in our country.
4.2 Creation of a Communication Channel
From the various discussions in Chapter 3, we had explained why blood
collection has not improved over the years in India. One critical point of our
proposed suggestion to improve the voluntary blood donation status in India was to
improve the awareness and motivation among first time donors to convert them to
regular donors. This necessitates a communication channel between the blood
donors and blood banks, where the donors can get information regarding blood
donation without them being disturbed.
4.2.1 Website Creation
For our project, we have concluded that the best communication channel
possible between blood donors and blood banks at present is a website. This
decision was taken after considering a variety of other alternatives and analyzing
their merits and demerits. For the website, we have used a variety of scripting 18
languages for the frontend and Joomla for the backend. Joomla is preferred
because it is an open source tool and easily updatable. A more detailed explanation
of this is given in Chapter 5.
4.2.2 Other Alternatives
A website is not the only means of communication possible between blood
banks and donors. Usual modes of communication between the blood banks and
blood donors is through a telephone call, though some new techniques employ
alerting donors at times of emergency using SMS and phone calls. Other
techniques like WAP pages are used put have not been considered for a variety of
reasons like their low reach and less popularity.
4.2.2.1 SMS Alerts
SMS alerts are an innovative way of communication. It helps to transfer
information in an easy and cheap free manner. But, implementing SMS alerts so as
to alert a donor of a particular blood type at times of emergency or at times of
shortfall of blood in blood banks is a tedious task, if performed manually. To
automate the process, one would need to purchase an SMS gateway, which costs a
few lakhs. Moreover, there is no guarantee that an SMS would provoke any type of
response from a prospective donor.
4.2.2.2 Phone Calls
This is the current method of communication between blood banks and
blood donors. In this system, the blood bank officials manually call and request
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prospective donors to come and donate blood at blood banks at times of emergency
or shortfall. This time-tested method has not brought in a big wave of donors over
the last few decades, though it is effective at critical times.
4.2.2.3 Motivational Speeches
As clichéd as it may sound, to motivate donors, the best solution is a
motivational speech. Often, at blood camps, it would be good if an official from
the respective blood banks offer a small introductory speech thanking the donors
and motivating them to continue donating blood at regular intervals.
4.2.3 Comparison between Various Channels
Now that the different communication channels have been discussed briefly,
we can compare them and say that:
In the area of donor awareness improvement, websites win hands
down. It is difficult for anyone to imagine how blood awareness can
be spread through phone calls or SMS alerts. With a website, you can
show pages of information that create blood awareness and pictures
and videos that help improve that effect. Motivational speeches are
definitely an option, but it is a big question if people would actually
listen or if the officials from the blood banks, in spite of their time and
space constraints, would offer speeches.
In the area of maintaining donor privacy, again, websites fare better if
one were to consider the fact that people consider it an intrusion of
their privacy if someone ought to keeping calling them or texting
them, even if it were for a critical cause to the caller.
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If the donor wants to contact the blood banks if he were to request
them to conduct blood camps at this college/work place, certainly,
SMSes or phone calls are the simpler option, but organizing an event
using the social networking sites has become a very popular option
these days, so websites don’t fare badly, either.
4.2.4 Advantages of Website
Assured donor privacy – no intrusion unlike phone calls or SMSes.
A portal for donors to ask and clarify their doubts or fears regarding
blood donation.
A portal to create awareness by featuring a list of various blood banks
in Chennai and their plight to ensure that blood is available at times of
need.
A facility to create events and groups, for friends to interact.
A facility for donors to register under hospitals of their choice, thus
increasing the donor base for the respective hospitals.
4.2.5 Disadvantages of Website
Difficult to access in rural areas or areas without Internet connection.
Difficult to reach people without a computer an Internet connection at
their homes.
Access is not instant, unlike SMS or phone calls.
4.3 Use of Social Networking
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The use of social networking plug ins in our website is a result of the fact
that a major contributors toward blood donation are the college students and the
young corporate people. To reach to those people, we have considered using social
networking plug ins, so that people can invite their Facebook or Twitter friends to
join our website, thus helping increase the potential donor base.
4.3.1 Significance
The use of social networking is to ensure that the site reaches a larger group
of people in a small time. Since lots of people are registering in social networking
sites each passing day, they help giving our site a larger scope of potential donors
to reach. Our site itself has many features of a social networking site: it contains a
space to share blogs, ask doubts, and importantly, to learn more about blood
donation. People can share the pages that they like using the social networking
plug ins, thus increasing the scope of the reach of articles promoting blood
donation.
4.3.2 Facebook and Twitter Plug-Ins
Facebook and Twitter plug-ins help to connect any website to the respective
social networking site. This immensely helps in promoting a website. For example,
if a user finds an article in a site to be useful, he/she can share it with their friends
through the plug-ins, thus making it reach a wider section of people.
4.3.3 Advantages
Greater reach.
More base of donors.
Increased popularity.
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4.4 Features
This section details the various features provided in our website that make it
unique compared to other websites offering seemingly similar websites.
4.4.1 Donor and Hospital Profile
The donor profile and hospital profiles signify the profiles provided to the
donors and hospitals with different levels of control. The donor has the power to
organize events, write blogs, post queries, add and remove friends, search for
hospitals and join under them, search for friends, etc. The hospital profile gives
hospitals the control to send messages to donors, so as to inform them of blood
camps or requesting donors of a particular blood group to come and donate blood,
at times of shortfall in blood stock for that group, etc.
4.4.2 Donor Privacy Assurance
At the time of joining, the donor is asked whether he/she wants to share
his/her contact information or not. Depending on their response, their contact
information is either displayed or not displayed. Thus, unlike a few other websites,
where the contact number of all donors is explicitly displayed, we try to allow for a
little discretion.
4.4.3 Donor Satisfaction
The donor is thanked each time the blood bank acknowledges his donation;
he is thanked if he registers under a blood bank; he is thanked if he shares an event
such as a blood camp with his friends. Such small acts strive to achieve donor
satisfaction and help us reach regular donors.
4.4.4 Voluntary Donor Lists Forwarded to Hospitals
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After a sizable number of donors have signed up under a blood bank or after
a month, whichever is earlier, we aim to send the list of donors that have agreed to
donate blood at any particular blood bank of their choice. This helps the blood
banks to contact the donors at times of emergency.
4.5 Advantages of the Proposed Solution
Uses social networking for a noble cause.
Reaches to potential untapped donor base
Encourages people to invite their friends and donate blood as a group.
4.6 Disadvantages of the Proposed Solution
Human motivation is an intangible factor – results of the success of
the reach of the website will be difficult to measure.
Since we rely only on websites, we may lose out on students who do
not have either computer or Internet at their homes.
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CHAPTER 5
WEBSITE SPECIFICATIONS
5.1 Introduction
In this chapter, the software details involved with this project will be
discussed. The core of the project is in creating a website with social networking
features so as to enable the college students and young employees to join. Hence
the website uses the various scripting languages and other popular tools used to
create a website. The various features offered by the website are: Doubt Forum,
Bloodix Page, Gossips Forum and Blog Forum, which would help popularizing the
website.
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5.2 Frontend
5.2.1 HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant
markup language for web pages. HTML is the basic building-blocks of webpages.
The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose
them into visual or audible web pages. The browser does not display the HTML
tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of the page.
HTML elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML allows
images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It
provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics
for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. It can
embed scripts in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of HTML
webpages.
Web browsers can also refer to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the
appearance and layout of text and other material. The W3C, maintainer of both the
HTML and the CSS standards, encourages the use of CSS over explicitly
presentational HTML markup.
5.2.2 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the
presentation semantics (the look and formatting) of a document written in a
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markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in
HTML and XHTML
CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content
(written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation,
including elements such as the layout, colors, and fonts. This separation can
improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the
specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple pages to share
formatting, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as
by allowing for tableless web design). CSS can also allow the same markup page
to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-
screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen
reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices. While the author of a document
typically links that document to a CSS style sheet, readers can use a different style
sheet, perhaps one on their own computer, to override the one the author has
specified.
CSS specifies a priority scheme to determine which style rules apply if more
than one rule matches against a particular element. In this so-called cascade,
priorities or weights are calculated and assigned to rules, so that the results are
predictable.
The CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C). Internet media type (MIME type) text/css is registered for use with CSS by
RFC 2318 (March 1998).
The popularity of CSS as a design tool has increased steadily and is now
regarded as the premier system for website design.
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5.2.3 PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (a recursive acronym, originally personal
home page) is a general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed
for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code
is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with
a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document. As a general-
purpose programming language, PHP code is processed by an interpreter
application in command-line mode performing desired operating system operations
and producing program output on its standard output channel. It may also function
as a graphical application. PHP is available as a processor for most modern web
servers and as a standalone interpreter on most operating systems and computing
platforms.
PHP includes free and open source libraries with the core build. PHP is a
fundamentally Internet-aware system with modules built in for accessing FTP
servers, many database servers, embedded SQL libraries such as embedded
PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite, LDAP servers, and others. Many functions
familiar to C programmers such as those in the stdio family are available in the
standard PHP build.
PHP allows developers to write extensions in C to add functionality to the
PHP language. These can then be compiled into PHP or loaded dynamically at
runtime. Extensions have been written to add support for the Windows API,
process management on Unix-like operating systems, multibyte strings (Unicode),
cURL, and several popular compression formats. Some more unusual features
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include integration with Internet Relay Chat, dynamic generation of images and
Adobe Flash content, and even speech synthesis.
5.2.4 My - Sequenced Query Language (MySQL)
MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that runs as
a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. The SQL phrase
stands for Structured Query Language. The MySQL development project has made
its source code available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, as
well as under a variety of proprietary agreements.
Free-software projects that require a full-featured database management
system often use MySQL. For commercial use, several paid editions are available,
and offer additional functionality. Some free software project examples: Joomla,
WordPress, MyBB, phpBB, Drupal and other software built on the LAMP
software stack. MySQL is also used in many high-profile, large-scale World Wide
Web products, including Wikipedia, Google and Facebook.
MySQL is a popular choice of database for use in web applications, and is a
central component of the widely used LAMP web application software stack—
LAMP is an acronym for "Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python". MySQL is
used in some of the most frequently visited web sites on the Internet, including
Flickr, Nokia.com, YouTube and as previously mentioned; Wikipedia, Google and
Facebook.
MySQL is written in C and C++. Its SQL parser is written in yacc, and a
home-brewed lexical analyzer named sql_lex.cc. MySQL works on many different
system platforms, including AIX, BSDi, FreeBSD, HP-UX, eComStation, i5/OS,
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IRIX, Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, NetBSD, Novell NetWare,
OpenBSD, OpenSolaris, OS/2 Warp, QNX, Solaris, Symbian, SunOS, SCO
OpenServer, SCO UnixWare, Sanos and Tru64. A port of MySQL to OpenVMS
also exists.
Many programming languages with language-specific APIs include libraries
for accessing MySQL databases. The HTSQL - URL based query method ships
with a MySQL adapter, allowing direct interaction between a MySQL database
and any web client via structured URLs. The MySQL server and official libraries
are mostly implemented in ANSI C/ANSI C++.
5.2.5 Javascript
JavaScript, also known as ECMAScript is a prototype-based object-oriented
scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is
also considered a functional programming language like Scheme and OCaml
because it has closures and supports higher-order functions.
JavaScript is an implementation of the ECMAScript language standard and
is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as part of a
web browser in order to provide enhanced user interfaces and dynamic websites.
This enables programmatic access to computational objects within a host
environment.
JavaScript uses syntax influenced by that of C. JavaScript copies many
names and naming conventions from Java, but the two languages are otherwise
30
unrelated and have very different semantics. The key design principles within
JavaScript are taken from the Self and Scheme programming languages.
5.2.6 Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)
Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a group of interrelated web
development methods used on the client-side to create interactive web applications.
With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in
the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing
page. Data is usually retrieved using the XMLHttpRequest object. Despite the
name, the use of XML is not needed, and the requests need not be asynchronous.
Like DHTML and LAMP, Ajax is not one technology, but a group of
technologies. Ajax uses a combination of HTML and CSS to mark up and style
information. The DOM is accessed with JavaScript to dynamically display, and to
allow the user to interact with the information presented. JavaScript and the
XMLHttpRequest object provide a method for exchanging data asynchronously
between browser and server to avoid full page reloads.
In the 1990s, most web sites were based on complete HTML pages; each
user action required that the page be re-loaded from the server (or a new page
loaded). This process is inefficient, as reflected by the user experience: all page
content disappears then reappears, etc. Each time a page is reloaded due to a partial
change, all of the content must be re-sent instead of only the changed information.
This can place additional load on the server and use excessive bandwidth.
Asynchronous loading of content first became practical when Java applets
were introduced in the first version of the Java language in 1995. These allow
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compiled client-side code to load data asynchronously from the web server after a
web page is loaded. In 1996, Internet Explorer introduced the iframe element to
HTML, which also enabled asynchronous loading. In 1999, Microsoft created the
XMLHTTP ActiveX control in Internet Explorer 5, which was later adopted by
Mozilla, Safari, Opera and other browsers as the XMLHttpRequest JavaScript
object. Microsoft has adopted the native XMLHttpRequest model as of Internet
Explorer 7, though the ActiveX version is still supported. The utility of
background HTTP requests to the server and asynchronous web technologies
remained fairly obscure until it started appearing in full scale online applications
such as Outlook Web Access (2000) and Oddpost (2002), and later, Google made a
wide deployment of Ajax with Gmail (2004) and Google Maps (2005).
5.2.7 WEB 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate
participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and
collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and
collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of
user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users
(consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for
them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video
sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies.
Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does
not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative
changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web. Whether Web
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2.0 is qualitatively different from prior web technologies has been challenged by
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, who called the term a "piece of
jargon", precisely because he intended the Web in his vision as "a collaborative
medium, a place where we could all meet and read and write". He called it the
"Read/Write Web"
The client-side/web browser technologies used in Web 2.0 development are
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax), Adobe Flash and the Adobe Flex
framework, and JavaScript/Ajax frameworks such as Yahoo! UI Library, Dojo
Toolkit, MooTools and jQuery(we have used MooTools, and jQuery). Ajax
programming uses JavaScript to upload and download new data from the web
server without undergoing a full page reload.
To allow users to continue to interact with the page, communications such as
data requests going to the server are separated from data coming back to the page
(asynchronously). Otherwise, the user would have to routinely wait for the data to
come back before they can do anything else on that page, just as a user has to wait
for a page to complete the reload. This also increases overall performance of the
site, as the sending of requests can complete quicker independent of blocking and
queueing required to send data back to the client.
The data fetched by an Ajax request is typically formatted in XML or JSON
(JavaScript Object Notation) format, two widely used structured data formats.
Since both of these formats are natively understood by JavaScript, a programmer
can easily use them to transmit structured data in their web application. When this
data is received via Ajax, the JavaScript program then uses the Document Object
Model (DOM) to dynamically update the web page based on the new data,
33
allowing for a rapid and interactive user experience. In short, using these
techniques, Web designers can make their pages function like desktop applications.
For example, Google Docs uses this technique to create a Web-based word
processor.
On the server side, Web 2.0 uses many of the same technologies as Web 1.0.
New languages such as PHP, Ruby, ColdFusion, Perl, Python, JSP and ASP are
used by developers to dynamically output data using information from files and
databases. What has begun to change in Web 2.0 is the way this data is formatted.
In the early days of the Internet, there was little need for different websites to
communicate with each other and share data. In the new "participatory web",
however, sharing data between sites has become an essential capability. To share
its data with other sites, a web site must be able to generate output in machine-
readable formats such as XML, RSS, and JSON. When a site's data is available in
one of these formats, another website can use it to integrate a portion of that site's
functionality into itself, linking the two together. When this design pattern is
implemented, it ultimately leads to data that is both easier to find and more
thoroughly categorized, a hallmark of the philosophy behind the Web 2.0
movement.
In brief, AJAX is a key technology used to build Web 2.0 because it
provides rich user experience and works any browser whether it is Firefox or
Internet Explorer. Then, a language with very good web services support should be
used to build Web 2.0 applications. In addition, the language used should be
iterative meaning that it will help easy and fast the addition and deployment of
features.
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5.3 Backend
5.3.1 Joomla
Joomla! is a free and open source content management system (CMS) for
publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets. It comprises a model–
view–controller (MVC) Web application framework that can also be used
independently.
Joomla! is written in PHP, uses object-oriented programming (OOP)
techniques and software design patterns, stores data in a MySQL database, and
includes features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages,
news flashes, blogs, polls, search, and support for language internationalization.
5.4 Using Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is simply a set of pooled computing resources and services
delivered over the web. When you diagram the relationships between all the
elements it resembles a cloud.
Cloud computing—not to be confused with grid computing, utility
computing, or autonomic computing—involves the interaction of several
virtualized resources. Cloud servers connect and share information based on the
level of website traffic across the entire network. Cloud computing is often
provided "as a service" over the Internet, typically in the form of infrastructure as a
service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or software as a service (SaaS).
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Cloud computing customers don't have to raise the capital to purchase,
manage, maintain, and scale the physical infrastructure required to handle drastic
traffic fluctuations. Instead of having to invest time and money to keep their sites
afloat, cloud computing customers simply pay for the resources they use, as they
use them. This particular characteristic of cloud computing—its elasticity—means
that customers no longer need to predict traffic, but can promote their sites
aggressively and spontaneously. Engineering for peak traffic becomes a thing of
the past.
Cloud computing delivers flexible applications, web services, and IT
infrastructure as a service over the Internet, using a utility pricing model. Cloud
computing allows businesses to instantly scale their technology requirements to
meet new demands. The Cloud is a cost-effective approach to technology because
businesses don't need to make usage predictions, upfront capital investments, or
over-purchase hardware or software to meet the demands of peak periods.
With the right approach, cloud computing can work for any size organization. The
industry has seen the highest uptake from startups and tech savvy developers,
however, enterprises are starting to adopt cloud computing. Examples of this
include pharmaceutical companies using the Cloud to perform drug research
analysis and online retailers trying a new strategy for surges in seasonal website
traffic.
For this project, we have used Blue Hat Network, which provides cloud
services. Blue Hat Network has been designed for website owners to easily, and
instantly offload there website's static image, JavaScript and CSS files to their
network for extremely fast delivery. By using a Cloud network, we enjoy the
36
benefits of extremely fast delivery of our website's static files which will in return
enhance our visitor's experience, which will ultimately increase popularity, and
increase our search engine ranking.
5.5 Various Blocks and Their UML Diagrams
Our website is a social networking site and hence it contains a range of
features including blogging, questioning, gossiping, user profiles etc. These blocks
have been separately coded using the various languages mentioned above. The
reason why we have developed our site as a social networking site is because it
allows each user to connect personally with their friends and hence, the youth, in
general would be more attracted to our site than if it were in any other way. Each
of these features is being explained in the form of separate blocks, as follows:
5.5.1user and Hospital Profiles
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Fig 5.1 UML Diagram – User Profile
Each user is provided with a profile after registration, from which he can access a variety of other blocks/features as mentioned above. She/he can update his status, create events, share videos, upload pictures, share videos, etc as mentioned above. There are two types of profiles: donor profile and hospital profile. Hospitals will have all the above mentioned features including additional features like sending messages to all donors informing them of the upcoming camps and informing when there is a certain drop in stock of any particular blood group so that the donors of that group alone can be informed through a message.
5.5.2 Bloggy
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Fig 5.2 UML Diagram – Blog Editor
The ‘bloggy’ feature enables the registered users to post their thoughts similar to the way blogger and other sites enable blogs to be posted. The user has to write her/his blog, and post it. The user has other features like changing the font type and size, adding images and posting links. The rich text editor interface is sure to attract users to blog. Blogging is one of the features that, we hope, will bring more users to our site. The conditions in blogging are that
Only registered users can use the feature, which helps us avoid spam and malicious content being posted on the website.
Users cannot post anonymously, as it may also encourage some mischievous users to post hate speeches or propagate violent or harmful behavior or to post sexually explicit content.
Any users found posting such content will immediately have their accounts terminated in bloodix.com
Many other features found in ordinary blogs such as attaching tags to blogs, for easier referencing in future.
39
For the future, we have plans where we will encourage first time donors to share their experience of donating blood, in order to motivate others to do the same.
5.5.3 Bloodix
Fig 5.3 UML Diagram – Bloodix Block
The ‘Bloodix’ block is our signature block, where we encourage donors to register under a blood bank of their choice. For registration, the donor has to fill a form mentioning her/his name, e-mail id, contact number, blood group and residential address. The conditions under the Bloodix block is that
Once the user registers her/his name under a blood bank, the user becomes a member of the group under the particular blood bank
The user is prone to receiving bulletins at regular intervals – say, once a week- in the form of messages in her/his Bloodix profile.
40
The user also may receive notifications regarding the Blood Camps conducted by that particular blood bank. In case, she/he happens to visit at a nearby location, they can always visit and donate blood.
In case the blood banks experience shortage in their blood level, they can send a message to the donors under them, requesting them to visit and donate blood at the earliest possible time.
5.5.4 Doubts
Fig 5.4 UML Diagram – Doubts Asking
The figure 5.4 shows the flow of steps when a user wants to ask a doubt. Each user gets a particular number of points for asking a question. The questions are updated in the database through the web interface. All the questions asked are displayed at all times in the Doubts tab at the home page of the website. Only
41
registered users can ask questions. Questions must not contain any explicit or provocative content.
Fig 5.5 UML Diagram – Doubts Answering
The UML diagram shown in Fig 5.5 depicts the block that explains the way doubts are answered in the Doubts block. The various points to be noted while the doubts are answered are that:
Only registered users can answer questions.
All the answers are displayed below the posted questions.
All the answers posted to a question are saved in the database and an e-mail is sent to the person who asked the question.
The asker can see the various answers and decide which the best answer for any given question is.
The users get points for both answering a question and getting chosen as the one who gave the best answer.
42
Depending on the number of points they score, the users move higher up in their levels.
With the context of blood donation, we can allow the users to ask for doubts regarding blood donation and transfusion and let others solve it.
5.5.5 Gossips
Fig5.6 UML Diagram- Gossips Block
The gossips forum enables the users to anonymously post gossips about their friends or other users. This is meant to attract the younger section of the audience. The tab is constantly checked so that no unethical gossips are posted.
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CHAPTER 6
SITE TEST RESUTS AND ANALYSIS
6.1 Site Launch and Promotion
The domain name www.bloodix.com and server was purchased on
21/02/2011. Our site was tested for nearly a month before being launched on
18/03/2011. We promoted our website simply by posting status messages on our
Facebook walls and encouraging our friends to join. We had also written blog
posts about the purpose of our website and our experiences as we met the various
blood banks in our city. We created a fan page in Facebook for our website and
named it as ‘Bloodix.com’. We had also requested our friends to share the page – if
they found it useful – to their friends as well, to make our site reach a larger mass
of people.
6.2 USER PARTICIPATION
Immediately after the launch of our site, there was a positive response to it:
friends of us joined the site and a few of them shared it with their friends.
However, there was a rise in the number of users joining the site during the first
weekend. It was found that a lot of users joined the site during weekends and
immediately after our blog posts were made and most of the registered users were
from Chennai, which was our target. As of 25/03/2011, there are a 104 users
44
registered with our site and almost 50 users who like our page in Facebook. This is
a significant number, especially because it was achieved in a short span of time:
one week. We believe that it is important to promote our site in a similar way in
order to sustain this growth. Mere blog posts may not be useful in the long run and
hence we plan to collaborate with various blood banks in and around Chennai and
let our users know of their plight by posting about them in our site and the
Facebook page of our site.
6.3 Contribution of Social Networking Plug-Ins
Almost half the number of users has come through invitations from their
friends in social networking sites. We expect this fraction to increase in the due
course of time, thus helping our site to grow at a much faster rate.
6.3Scope for Further Work
There is a tremendous scope for innovation and improvement as far as both
social networking and blood donation are concerned.
Blood collection for urgent cases, such as heart transplant, where fresh blood
– not more than 3 hours old- can be only collected through replacement
donors. Hence, for them, the site may not be useful. Other alternatives must
be considered for such cases.
Using an SMS portal can help the hospitals/blood banks update the dates and
locations of their blood donation camps instantly through SMS to the group
members under them.
45
Involving hospital/blood bank officials to answer the doubts raised by
general public can help create awareness regarding the concepts of blood
donation.
CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSION
After researching in various blood banks around the city and launching our site,
and promoting it for two weeks, we have arrived at the following conclusions:
Voluntary blood donation is the safest way of donating blood.
Blood collection is the most challenging part among the duties of a blood
bank.
With the immense human resources available in our country, the gap
between demand and supply of blood can be bridged easily.
The main reason why blood collection is low is because of the inability of
the blood banks to maintain contact with one-time users due to a variety of
reasons.
Websites are an easy and cost efficient way for a blood bank to keep in
touch with the young, literate, potential donors.
Because a major percentage of the voluntary blood donors belong to the 18-
40 age category, using social networking plug-ins enhances the reach of our
website.
46
By collaborating with blood banks, we can post their bulletins and details of
their upcoming camps in our websites, enabling interested users to go and
donate at any time that they are free.
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