An online portal for Sanquin donors and employees

About Sanquin

Sanquin is a blood bank that provides all blood supply in the Netherlands. With around 2,200 employees and 300,000 blood donors, they meet the blood demand in the country. Blood collection occurs at fixed and mobile locations, and these donations help over 100,000 patients annually. In addition to collecting, processing, and distributing blood products, Sanquin is also involved in research and education.

A short-term SaaS solution

The world of Sanquin and its donors is also evolving rapidly. Take, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic—how do you deal with that? And how do you ensure that donors can safely schedule appointments to donate blood?

In the old situation, Sanquin calculated the blood demand, and based on that, donors were summoned by mail to come in. The summons meant they had a two-week timeframe to come in for their blood donation.

Due to the pandemic, scheduling appointments for mobile locations was necessary to prevent crowding and contamination. As a short-term solution, they started using the SaaS application "Datumprikker" (Date Picker). But as we mentioned earlier, it was only suitable for the short term, so they immediately started thinking about the long term.

From pilot to full-fledged portal

For the long term, we started with a pilot, namely the Mendix application "Mijn oproep" (Customer Invitation). With this, the donor can easily schedule an appointment to donate. Here's how it works: the donor receives an email and clicks on the magic link, automatically logging them in and showing the necessary information.

In other words:

• All Sanquin locations: both fixed locations and mobile sites
• And the agenda for each location

Sanquin instantly receives all the necessary information through the magic link, such as the donor's name and blood type. Within 12 weeks, 200,000 out of 300,000 donors had made appointments through the application.

Data insights for Sanquin

Sanquin can now gather valuable insights about the blood donors' needs, the crowdedness at the locations, and the collected blood types. In other words, the new application provides insights and predictability.

For example, the appointment-based donation system was also implemented at fixed locations after receiving positive feedback from mobile sites.

Development of 'Customer Portal'

Sanquin was so pleased and satisfied with the initial Mendix portal that we could also start painting the bigger picture. Online donation scheduling is convenient for the donor, but how do you attract and retain donors?

That's why we expanded the initial 'Mijn oproep' (Customer Invitation) into 'Mijn omgeving' (Customer Portal). This enhanced version provides the donor with much more insights and capabilities, such as:

• Managing appointments
• Changing personal information
• Viewing donation history, including medical information like blood pressure and hemoglobin levels

With the combination of Mendix and Azure, we can provide the donor with secure access. The donor logs in using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to verify the user's authenticity using more than just a password. This ensures privacy and creates a functional environment for the donor.

Why Mendix low-code

With Mendix, we could set up a scalable pilot for Sanquin in no time. Our agile consultants rapidly build new functionalities and release them. Moreover, Mendix's time-to-market is incredibly fast. We launched a pilot and even a full-fledged application within six weeks. Additionally, the application presents the donor's data quickly and visually appealingly.