Project lead: Laura Baglow-Micic, Transfusion Research Network Manager
Clinical lead: Dr Mike Desborough, Consultant Haematologist, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Project Overview
The Transfusion 2024 report outlined the priorities of the blood transfusion community to perform research to provide best patient care. It has been well described in the literature that patients who are treated in more research active NHS hospitals have better outcomes and receive better care, even if they are not the subjects of the research.
There are a multitude of barriers to transfusion departments being involved in research, including lack of capacity, lack of patient power to contribute to meaningful research alone, time constraints of all staff working in transfusion, and lack of knowledge of which areas of research are currently in focus.
There have been many transfusion studies that have provided meaningful evidence which has changed clinical practice including; TRICC, FOCUS, TRIPICU, TOPPS, PlaNeT-2 trails. It is the aim of the Transfusion Research Network to involve more hospitals in these kinds of research studies, to help address healthcare inequalities, to connect healthcare professionals who are interested in performing research, and to provide solutions to overcome the barriers in the research space as it stands currently.
