Hospitals and Blood Supply
We are constantly faced with blood shortages across the nation. Besides eligible donors not donating as being one of the factors to this problem, there is a huge lack of having an optimal health delivery system. In other words, hospitals do not have great access to blood banks in order to find the best prices and blood type. This creates very large variations in prices in different regions and also shortages. In a perfect world, all hospitals would be connected to all blood banks in order to have the best market-clearing prices. A start-up founded in Dallas is trying to reach that goal using their cloud-based platform.
BloodBuy is a startup that is connecting hospitals to blood centers across the nation. Hospitals are able to go to this website and search for the specific type of blood and amount. Blood centers are able to provide their information and prices. It “enables blood centers and hospital-based blood banks to connect in a way never before possible. Our web-based tools simplify workflow and automate data analysis processes.”
I found several key components that we have covered in class in these articles. First, this relates to what we discussed in lecture about power. How it has been done before, hospitals normally would only do business with local blood centers. Thus, local blood banks had all the power in its region and could potentially spike up the prices depending on what the hospitals in that region mostly needed. This creates an uneven variation in prices among the nation. However, this company is going to even out the field by connecting more hospitals to more blood banks across the nation. This evens out the power and produces fair prices. It also covers matching markets. Hospitals can now find the type of supply it needs with blood banks much farther away. It gets closer to having each hospital matching with a blood bank that can meet all its standards.
Overall, I find this very interesting. It is great seeing how networks is applied to real-world situations such as this to solve inefficiencies.
