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Health research is the process for discovering new knowledge about health and disease, and uses expertise from many different medical and scientific fields. It's an important part of our service which allows us to develop new and better treatments for patients.
Sometimes our health research involves studying your blood. The non-transfused parts of a blood or apheresis platelet donation can help advance science and medicine into the future.
How your donation can contribute to health research
The IBTS collects specific research consent from donors in order to provide any non-transfused part of donations, free-of-charge, to Irish health researchers. Researchers need access to this service in order to have the materials they need to learn more about human biology. Experiments may analyse your cells, biochemistry and biological activity using various laboratory techniques and the methods used will depend on the type of research.
Many of our researchers focus on blood components like red blood cells, plasma and platelets. One exciting area of study is how can we improve existing products, like platelets. Our researchers are working to extend the seven-day shelf-life of platelets by freezing them. An extended shelf-life could ensure more platelets are available to the people who need them most.
Research project objectives are reviewed prior to approving any researchers access to this service. In addition, all research studies must be approved by a Health Research Ethics Committee before they can begin. Researchers are not permitted to carry out experiments that aim to profile your DNA or genetic background.
Every blood donation you make could contribute to our research and impact thousands of lives for the better. You’ve read a small sample of our program, but there’s much more being done.
If you require more detailed information, please check out our website or contact us at research@ibts.ie