Blood Supply Chain Research
Voluntary blood donors are at the core of all blood banking in Finland. FRCBS takes care of our donors in many ways, also through scientific research.
Finnish Red Cross Blood service does research of health effects of blood donation and transfusion, develops mathematical models to predict blood demand, blood donation intervals and need of transfusion, but also studies operational and logistic aspects of blood banking for the benefit of the blood donor and its recipient and to save money for society. The research is led by Associate professor Mikko Arvas. Blood Service R&D department publishes its scientific programming code in the GitHub service with open-source licenses.
Our ongoing research focus is on:
1) the health of blood donors through the extensive health data available in the FinnGen project
2) the need and effects of blood transfusions through HUS electronic health care data.
Recently, our researchers have contributed to multiple studies including iron & anemia, hepatitis E and sociological studies on blood donation.
Find out more of our previous donor health studies from these publications:
- Verenluovuttajat ovat muuta väestöä terveempiä – syy vai seuraus? (2025)
- Biobanking benefits donors and blood services (2025)
- Tutkimustieto rauta-arvoista ohjaa verenluovutuksen suosituksi (2024)
- FinDonor-tutkimus: Luovutusväli on merkittävin yksittäinen vaikuttaja verenluovuttajien rautavarastoihin (2019)