You’re invited to take our new Virtual Tour!

New Tour introduces journey of blood donation

Canadian Blood Services’ new Virtual Tour provides an easy to access, highly visual introduction to the journey of a blood donation from donor to recipient and is now available on Canadian Blood Services professional education website, Profedu.ca.

Originally envisioned as a centralized and interactive tool to help introduce new medical and laboratory trainees to information about Canada’s blood system, the Virtual Tour promotes awareness of the step-by-step processes for recruiting donors and collecting, manufacturing, testing, labelling, storing and distributing blood components to hospitals for transfusion.

Providing foundational understanding of Canada’s blood system

As a Medical Officer with Canadian Blood Services and Principal Investigator for this Virtual Tour project, Dr. Bodnar engages with medical trainees regularly and recognizes the importance of providing a foundational understanding of Canada’s blood system for their future clinical practice. Says Bodnar:

“The goal of this project was to develop an interactive online learning tool that would allow health professionals from a variety of backgrounds to take a virtual tour of the blood component manufacturing process at Canadian Blood Services and follow the lifeline from donor to recipient. Not all learners have access to an in-person tour of Canadian Blood Services’ facilities, and this Virtual Tour provides an online alternative that can be accessed anywhere, anytime, at their own pace.”

Dr. Matthew Yan, a co-investigator on the project team, describes the resource as: “A gateway to the wide range of educational content available on Canadian Blood Services’ professional education website, Profedu.ca. The magic behind the Virtual Tour is that it provides the context of timing and location on when specific topics, such as donor testing, might occur in the manufacturing process.”

Navigating stops along the Tour

The Tour includes 9 sections, referred to as ‘stops', that highlight each of the steps in the vein-to-vein journey of a whole blood donation. Describes Bodnar, "The Virtual Tour acts like a bookshelf compiling a variety of educational resources and is bookended with personal stories from blood donors and recipients. This highlights how the human aspect grounds all of the work that we do at Canadian Blood Services and, from the first stop to the last stop, we envisioned it as replicating the infinity symbol that Canadian Blood Services has chosen as part of our brand.”

While it is recommended to take the Tour in sequential order to understand the journey from start to finish, a unique element in the design of this Tour is the ability of the visitor to navigate at their own pace. This allows learners to focus on the main stops for key takeaways or choose to take a deep dive into the curated selection of additional resources, links and videos thoughtfully integrated into each stop.

A “must-have, practical resource”

The Virtual Tour is primarily designed with health-care professionals, blood bank and laboratory staff and transfusion medicine specialists in mind, but it may also provide blood donors and individuals who are interested in transfusion medicine with a deeper understanding of the processes behind Canada’s Lifeline.

Transfusion medicine fellow and recipient of Canadian Blood Services’ Elianna Saidenberg Transfusion Medicine Traineeship Award, Dr. Sheharyar Raza joined the team of authors for the Virtual Tour during its development. Says Dr. Raza: “The Virtual Tour is a must-have, practical resource for medical and laboratory trainees and professionals at all levels who are seeking to understand where blood components come from and how they are processed before they can be safely given to patients.”

Collaboration makes Tour creation possible

The Virtual Tour’s creation involved much collaboration by subject matter experts and contributors from numerous teams across Canadian Blood Services who collected and refined the content and developed the website pages that could bring it to life for learners. 

This work began in 2021 supported by an award from Canadian Blood Services’ BloodTechNet Award Program. Launched as a competitive funding program a decade earlier, the BloodTechNet Award Program facilitates the development of innovative educational projects in the transfusion, cellular therapy and transplantation communities in Canada. Members of the original team that initiated the Tour’s development under the project title An interactive virtual tour of blood product manufacturing at Canadian Blood Services included Dr. Melanie Bodnar, Dr. Sophie Chargé, Dr. Matthew Yan, Tricia Abe, Dr. Bryan Tordon, and Dr. Gwen Clarke. Their medical and knowledge mobilization expertise was supplemented by the design vision of Goran Mraovic, the software development ‘know-how’ of members of Canadian Blood Services’ donor experience IT team, and the support of Canadian Blood Services’ communications team members to source high-quality, engaging photos from a variety of facilities for the Tour stops. Comprehensive testing processes prior to publication were also made possible by members of Canadian Blood Services’ knowledge mobilization and strategic alliances, medical, product and process development, stakeholder engagement, communications, and IT teams. This project is truly a shining example of the value of collaboration at Canadian Blood Services! 

Take your Virtual Tour today by visiting Canadian Blood Services’ professional education website, Profedu.ca.

• Learn more about other research and education projects funded by Canadian Blood Services on blood.ca.
• Connect with other tools and resources developed through the BloodTechNet Award Program on Canadian Blood Services’ professional education website, Profedu.ca.

Canadian Blood Services – Driving world-class innovation

Through discovery, development and applied research, Canadian Blood Services drives world-class innovation in blood transfusion, cellular therapy and transplantation—bringing clarity and insight to an increasingly complex healthcare future. Our dedicated research team and extended network of partners engage in exploratory and applied research to create new knowledge, inform and enhance best practices, contribute to the development of new services and technologies, and build capacity through training and collaboration. Find out more about our research impact. 

The opinions reflected in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Canadian Blood Services nor do they reflect the views of Health Canada or any other funding agency.