Project Overview
Coordinating the collection of blood products from more than 4,000 people in two days can be overwhelming. Trying to funnel that many students into and out of one collection center created a logistical nightmare when the line of donors stretched around the outside of the University’s Hearnes Center. Frustrated students and community members spent hours waiting to donate a single pint of blood. Many students were forced either to skip class or abandon their donation efforts.
Delta Systems was called in to help alleviate the problem. With advice from American Red Cross staffers and MU students, DELTA designed a check-in database application that allows Mizzou student associations to schedule their members’ donation times. To make the system practical for students, DELTA created a website so each student organization liaison could register their members from anywhere at anytime. The system also allows organizers to ensure that a continual stream of donors is being processed throughout the event by alerting coordinators when too many people have registered for the same time slot.
Since working with Delta, Mizzou has been able repeatedly to host some of the largest blood drives in the world, and time spent waiting to donate has been reduced to minutes, and in most cases, eliminated.
In addition to reducing wait time, the system monitors the flow of donors in real time during the drive, showing administrators hour-by-hour breakdowns of the number of donors checked through the donation center. After the blood drive, detailed reports are provided to the student organizations and committees showing exactly how many students arrived for their appointments on time and how long it took each student to donate.
