Data-driven care: How Irish Blood Transfusion Service improves clinic efficiency and donor matching with Jaspersoft

Challenge

Moving beyond PDF reports and unsupported reporting systems

The Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) supplies blood to hospitals across Ireland and supports bone marrow, organ, and platelet services. Teams such as Donor Services rely on reports to manage appointments, monitor stock, review test results, and support clinics nationwide.

Unfortunately, existing reporting tools failed to fully support these needs. One system primarily produced PDFs, which forced staff to manually copy data into Microsoft Excel, and lacked features to schedule or email reports. Another system offered greater flexibility but was no longer supported.

IBTS needed a reliable, flexible reporting solution to support and maintain its services. 

"People want to get their hands on the data. They want it in Excel so they can perform their own calculations, bring it together with other data, and centralize it in one place. I've seen people manually copying and pasting data out of PDFs and doing really painful work just to get what they need,"

—  Claire Moore, IBTS Applications Manager

Solution

Giving operational teams the reports they need, when they need them

IBTS operates in a highly regulated environment, where data and document layouts often need to appear in the same place every time. It needed a solution that could: produce Excel reports, schedule report delivery, allow detailed formatting, and work with the SQL skills already available on the team.

To achieve a stronger and more flexible reporting environment, the organization adopted Jaspersoft to create and build reports. 

"We had one reporting option that was limited in what it could produce, and another system that was going out of support. We needed something else that could produce the operational reports our teams rely on and give us more flexibility in how those reports were created and delivered." 

Supporting donor services and daily clinic operations

IBTS now uses Jaspersoft across several parts of its organization, including the following departments: Donor Services, Inventory Management, Laboratories, Finance, Materials Management, and Product Shipping.

Donor services can see each clinic's available capacity and schedule for attending. By reviewing how booked a clinic is, teams can decide whether they need to contact more donors and use stock information to focus outreach on donors with blood types currently in greater demand. Reports also help identify which donors need appointment reminders. 

These benefits support IBTS's three fixed clinics and six mobile clinics operating across Ireland.

"Donor services would be the biggest users. They look at their appointments and ask, 'Who do we have coming through the door, how full is the clinic, and based on demand, do we need more donors with a certain blood type?' They can then take action by contacting regular donors and asking them to attend." 

Excel reporting that teams can work with

With IBTS's previous PDF-based reports, data was technically accessible but not easy to work with. Operational teams needed to first copy information from PDFs to view it in Excel. 

Jaspersoft's Excel reporting now allows teams to easily sort, combine, group, and analyze information before making decisions. It's simple to combine report data with information from other sources. Experienced users also have the flexibility to create their own calculations and summaries. 

"People want things in Excel because they can perform their own calculations, combine the information with other data, and bring everything together in one place. Jaspersoft allows us to give them data in a format they can work with, which removes a lot of the painful manual effort we saw before." 

Scheduled reports and email delivery

IBTS's mobile clinic teams frequently work from temporary locations such as hotels, hospitals, and community spaces. They may not be able to directly connect to the organization's internal systems while on site. 

Staff have limited time to review information, print appointment schedules, load equipment, and prepare for the day before leaving for a clinic. A single reporting delay could prevent a clinic from starting on time. 

With Jaspersoft, IBTS teams can schedule reports and send them directly by email. Staff can receive the information they need without having to log into the reporting system or run each report individually.

"The scheduling and emailing of reports are important because clinics do not always have access to our internal systems. It's great to have something that can be emailed to them so they don't have to connect back to IBTS and run the report every time. They can have the information ready when they need it." 

Reports tailored to each location and user

Different clinics need distinct views of the same operational data. A staff member in Limerick may only need to access the appointment schedule for their specific location. Meanwhile, the central team in Dublin may need to review every clinic across the country.

Jaspersoft enables IBTS to add parameters to reports, so each user receives the appropriate, relevant information. The organization can maintain a single core report and then use filters to create different outputs for specific teams. This reduces the need to build and maintain separate reports for every clinic and region.

"We can have all the data in one report, but use parameters to cut it down for each person. Someone in one location only sees the schedule for that clinic, while someone in another location sees something different. At the same time, the central team can still review all the data."

Precise formats for regulated workflows

Certain IBTS reports must display data in a specific, repeatable layout. In a regulated environment, documented procedures may state exactly where information should appear on a report. Shipment reports may also need a blank space for staff to place a physical barcode label linked to a bag of plasma or another blood product. Standard spreadsheets typically don't provide enough control for these use cases. 

Jaspersoft's formatting and JavaScript capabilities allow teams to create reports that behave like fixed templates. Information, boxes, and label spaces appear in the same position each time the report is generated.

"In some cases, the report needs to be presented in a very specific way. We may need an empty box where a barcode sticker will be placed, and that information has to appear in the same location every time. Jaspersoft gives us the flexibility to create something that feels more like a controlled template than a standard report." 

Making room for walk-in donors

Standard appointment data typically only shows donors who have already booked an appointment, not the gaps between the appointments. That made it more challenging for clinic staff to see when they could accommodate walk-in donors. 

Using Jaspersoft and custom SQL, the IBTS team created appointment reports that also display empty time slots. Staff can now easily review printed schedules, identify open times, and add walk-in donors to free slots.

This simple change gives clinic teams a clearer view of available capacity, enabling more efficient use of each facility.

"If only 80% of the appointments are filled, the report can include an empty line for the times when nobody is booked. If somebody arrives at the clinic as a walk-in, the team can look at the page and immediately say, 'There's a slot here.' It sounds simple, but it's something the appointments team really appreciates." 

Reliable access to time-sensitive information

IBTS uses reports to support daily clinic and inventory decisions, which stresses the importance of reliable reporting. Clinic teams also depend on appointment reports being ready before they depart for mobile locations. This means a system outage could delay report printing and prevent a clinic from opening on schedule. 

With Jaspersoft, IBTS now runs a stock report at the same time every day, creating a consistent baseline each day. This lets teams compare Monday's stock position to Tuesday's without different reporting times affecting the results.

"The most important thing is that it works the way it's supposed to work. We don't really have outages for Jaspersoft, and we don't have strange or unexpected issues. It's reliable, it's consistent, and it works the way we expect it to work." 

Supporting more detailed donor-to-patient matching

IBTS performs several tests on donated blood before releasing it for use. In addition to matching by blood type, patients with more complex needs may require more detailed matching.

IBTS is developing a report that shows which additional tests were completed the last time a donor gave blood. Laboratory teams can then confidently choose and perform different tests each time that donor returns. This helps teams gather more detailed information about each donor while avoiding unnecessarily repeating work.

The result is a more precise ability to match donated blood with patients who have specific needs. 

"The report powered by Jaspersoft shows us which tests were completed the last time that donor came in. The lab can see that we have already tested for A, B, and C, so instead of repeating those tests, we can move on to D and E. That allows us to perform more granular testing and create an even closer match between the donor and the patient." 

Responsive technical support

IBTS recently upgraded to Jaspersoft Server version 9. According to Claire, Jaspersoft ran a smooth process, and the technical work on their side was straightforward.

A consistent technical contact from Jaspersoft helped the IBTS team complete the project without repeated explanations or unnecessary escalations. The technician already understood the environment and how to connect to the system, and had an established working relationship with the IBTS developer. This was especially valuable for IBTS, being a smaller organization without the purchasing power or support resources of a large global company.

"Having the same person involved speeds the process up so much. He already knows how to connect to the system, understands what the report developer is explaining, and doesn't need everything explained again from the beginning. I didn't have to step in and escalate issues. We had someone competent who wanted to get the work done, which made everything faster and easier." 

Results

Improving daily operations while preparing for more advanced analytics

IBTS's Jaspersoft-powered reports now support around 120,000 whole-blood donations and 10,000-12,000 platelet donations per year. Teams use this data to send reminders, fill open clinic capacity, recruit donors, monitor stock, and avoid repeating certain laboratory tests. 

"Jaspersoft has helped us significantly improve operational efficiency. We use the reports to identify who should receive reminders, make sure people show up for clinics, find open capacity, recruit more donors when needed, and understand our blood type inventory at any point in time. " 

Jaspersoft will also support IBTS's future data platform. The organization will be able to build dashboards, expand analytics, further reduce manual work, and create a more complete view of donor activity and clinic performance.

"I look forward to further enhancements with the introduction of a new Data Platform where we can consolidate our data, do more complex analytical reporting, and give people the data at their fingertips that they deserve. There is so much manual effort involved in pulling information together today. Once we bring the data together, there are so many things we'll be able to do better for the business."