KBSI, in a project funded by the Department of Defense, is developing a Blood Reserve Availability Assessment, Tracking, and Management System (BRAMS) that will allow the ASBP to radically improve the management and supply chain logistics of the armed forces blood supply. Key to this improvement is maintaining the integrity of blood supply data: making sure that data is entered into the system is valid and consistent. To support this functionality, BRAMS uses innovative, web-based approaches for collecting blood data and loading that data into the DoD’s Joint Medical Asset Repository (JMAR). BRAMS uses template-based and file-based data integrity and access control mechanisms to insure that the data entered is valid, clean, and not duplicated by other data sources. These mechanisms and BRAMS’s easy-to-use web interface facilitate data collection and extend data collection to civilian agencies like the American Red Cross and blood donation centers.

Improving and extending data collection is only the first step, however. Making this data work for the DoD is the more pressing goal of the BRAMS project. BRAMS also provides advanced data mining and knowledge based analyses technologies, including proactive problem identification and resolution capabilities, to improve blood supply management. These technologies allow users to, for example, radically improve inventory management by using the data input to quickly identify excess and shortage inventories in blood collection centers. BRAMS provides customizable data display features that allow users to graphically view trend and pattern analyses and to visually track and analyze consumption and inventory rates at the facility, region, and service levels. Performance indicators and metrics monitor the historical minimum, maximum, average, and safe consumption levels as well as how well a particular facility is managing their blood inventories (e.g., the average number of shortages, amount destroyed, and expiration rates). BRAMS data mining and analysis techniques also include predictive logistics and forecasting, agent based alerts and notifications, emergency response management capabilities, and transportation optimization analysis.

BRAMS enables program and preparedness managers to use data mining and analytics—technologies that, because of their sophistication, were previously too specialized for the nonexpert user—to detect problems, analyze the underlying drivers of system behavior, evaluate alternate solutions, and, ultimately, optimize blood supply chain management. By making these technologies available to BRAMS users, the system provides access to state-of-the-art decision support, the ability to explore large numbers of decision alternatives in constant time, and the ability to forecast blood supply needs under any variety of conditions. This approach allows blood supply managers—who, unlike data mining consultants, best understand the issues involved in blood supply logistics—to develop and adapt, on their own, the measures of decision making support in the face of unpredictable and rapidly changing environments: a capability that is fundamental to emergency planning and response.