Today, we’re celebrating the 1000th kidney transplant made possible through the national Highly Sensitized Patient and Kidney Paired Donation programs. Congratulations Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation community! Your collaboration in creating these national programs demonstrates that Canadian patients benefit when we work together.

April 22-28 marks National Organ and Tissue Donation Week in Canada — a week dedicated to raising awareness about the critical needs of patients across the country.

The International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) is coming to town! Seven weeks and counting down until the 35th International Congress of the ISBT takes place in Toronto. This prestigious international meeting of transfusion medicine professionals hasn’t been held here in Canada since 2002. The early registration deadline is April 19. Many transfusion experts from around the world will bring their expertise to Canada enhancing our opportunities to learn about and discuss international initiatives in the Canadian context. The annual Canadian Society for Transfusion Medicine (CSTM) meeting

Choosing Wisely Canada transfusion recommendations brought to "life" in video form by Dr. Clinton Campbell and his creative team

Our own Chief Scientist, Dr. Dana Devine was recently on “display” at Canada’s national science museum

On April 24-25, 2018 the International Consensus Conference on Patient Blood Management (ICC-PBM2018) took place in Frankfurt, Germany.

Since 2011, many excellent projects have come to life through Canadian Blood Services' BloodTechNet program, which also receives support from Grifols. A new resource, titled Blood & Clots, and one of its creators, are the focus of today's post. Through the BloodTechNet competition, Canadian Blood Services' Centre for Innovation funds innovative projects aimed at delivering educational tools and resources that support the development of skills, knowledge, and expertise of health professionals in the transfusion, cellular therapy, and transplantation communities in Canada. Blood and Clots series

Recipients of the Canadian Blood Services Lifetime Achievement Award are individuals whose landmark contributions are recognized as both extraordinary and world class in the field of transfusion or transplantation medicine, stem cell or cord blood research in Canada and/or abroad.

This article by Robert Flower, Associate Professor, University of Sydney, was originally published in 2017 on The Conversation (Australia) under CC BY ND licence.

In 2017, we published numerous research stories, here are a few of our favourites. Natural killers: when cells go wrong — New research reveals insights into causes of FNAIT A new study by Centre for Innovation scientist Dr. Heyu Ni and his research team at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto reveals insights into causes of miscarriage for some women... Calculating impacts of change Our in-house engineer, John Blake, did some nifty number crunching and estimated that an eligibility change would mean about 35,000 fewer donations collected in a year — hence a push for new donors to step forward to