Blood donation mobile applications: are donors ready?

Abstract

The rapid rise of mobile communication technologies has the potential to dramatically change and improve blood donor recruitment and retention efforts. E-mail invitations were sent to blood donors in a large metropolitan area to participate in a Web-based survey designed to gauge their readiness and interest level for a blood donation mobile application ("app"). A total of 982 ethnically diverse respondents of various age groups and prior donation experiences were surveyed. Among the respondents, 87.3% had ready access to smart phones. E-mail was chosen by 62.1% as the currently preferred method when contacted by the blood center, followed by texting (10.1%). App features desired by most respondents were the abilities to request appointments 24/7 (76.8%) and to receive appointment confirmations quickly (81.3%). Many were concerned about receiving too many alerts or messages (64.1%) or insufficient protection for personal information (53.5%). Overall, 67.7% of respondents indicated that they were likely to use a blood donation mobile app. Likelihood was not significantly different by sex or ethnicity, and the impact of education level was limited. Donors who currently made donation appointments via telephone or a website were equally likely to use such an app. However, donors older than 45 years were less likely than younger donors (p = 0.001), and donors with more than five lifetime donations were more likely than less frequent donors to use such an app (p = 0.02). In a metropolitan area, donors are very receptive to using a mobile app to manage their donations.