Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

independent.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 115 posts

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#61

Post by phaemon »

jacquesm wrote: post #12

So, how long until someone figures out that they don't actually need to save someone's life to send a text message? And what about using the blood when someone's life is not saved, does that not warrant a text message? How come the entities using the blood and/or distributing it have access to the phone numbers of the donors?

There's nothing in the article that says they do. They say they get a message from the blood collection agency when they donate and another when their blood is used.

I imagine it works pretty much as you suggested below: each bag of blood is identified with a serial number, the collection agency is alerted when that bag is used, this triggers a message from them to the donor.

Would you be happy with that?

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#62

Post by boomlinde »

danieltillett wrote: post #31
minot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens to those areas that need resources that nobody really cares about? This is why taxes cannot be donations. Indeed, they are not donations. I remember the people at institutional giving at my old college say that nobody wants their name on a parking lot.

Of course - if governments could raise funds by donations they would not tax. I hate taxes, but I hate the absence of taxes more :)

Are you saying that if there are more effective ways of raising money, governments necessarily know about them? I'm on your side with regards to taxing, but governments are slow-moving beasts that are often controlled by ideological moves rather than practical ones.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#63

Post by pluma »

tomjen3 wrote: post #49
fabiandesimone wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought about this about taxes. If you could choose from a list of projects a la Kickstarter where YOU choose where your taxes go to, I'm sure people would not only feel better about taxes in general but would allow them to get involved in said projects.

Actually I think I could work such that when you are unemployed or getting money from the government coffers you also get a notice with a name and picture of the person who payed tax to give you that. Sorta like "your income this months was made possible by the hard work of $NAME" - would you be more or less inclined to abuse government founds this way?

That would be passive-aggressive abuse. Unemployment is rarely a choice, yet society likes to make the unemployed feel that way. This would add insult to injury.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#64

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

boomlinde wrote: post #62
danieltillett wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course - if governments could raise funds by donations they would not tax. I hate taxes, but I hate the absence of taxes more :)

Are you saying that if there are more effective ways of raising money, governments necessarily know about them? I'm on your side with regards to taxing, but governments are slow-moving beasts that are often controlled by ideological moves rather than practical ones.

Governments are well-known to use every trick in the book to get more money.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#67

Post by jessriedel »

AriaMinaei wrote: post #14

This could work not just for donating blood, but for pretty much any kind of service. Imagine if you could see, in real time, how your job affects other people's lives, even in the most mundane way. It would let you see the value of what you do, and give you a reason to do it better.

I think it's a very important idea that will be most useful in incentivizing people to produce open content or otherwise donate their time and money. It's the idea behind the new StackExchange user pages:

>How many people have you helped?

> “People Reached” is a new way to see just how much your efforts here matter. For the first time ever, you can see roughly how many times an actual human being – very likely one looking for help – found your contributions here. Personally, I like to call it the “Saving-the-frigging-world-o-meter”.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2015/04/two-new-user-pages-one...

This is available crudely for Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pageview_statistics http://stats.grok.se/

I think it should be a very high priority for the project to allow users to quickly and attractively integrate this into their userpage (and by default for new users). Could help reverse the slow atrophy of the wikipedia user base.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#68

Post by ZenoArrow »

joezydeco wrote: post #54
sajal83 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many places already do that... counting the number of times a person has donated (not actually used) and giving them some status accordingly.

Except we now live in the Internet age...where nothing happens unless you can post it on Twitter or Facebook.

Speak for yourself.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#69

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

jacquesm wrote: post #42
kryptiskt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that if a donor is diagnosed with an infectious disease you have to throw away all blood in the centre? There are good reasons to track the provenance of blood.

No, but you will have to throw away all blood products from that donor and you will have to pass the message back to the collection point so they can alert the donor. So yes, you need to be able to track the provenance of the blood but the final recipient of the product should not have the ability to contact the donor directly, nor should the donor have knowledge of when and/or where their blood was used. This can al…

Preventing the linking of the blood to its donor means the donor can't be informed if it turns out they had a serious blood-borne disease.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#70

Post by SCAQTony »

joezydeco wrote: post #54
sajal83 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many places already do that... counting the number of times a person has donated (not actually used) and giving them some status accordingly.

Except we now live in the Internet age...where nothing happens unless you can post it on Twitter or Facebook.

Maybe they should post it on Twitter too - "@JoezyDeco just saved the life of a premature infant." (Graphic of a God Mode badge.) ;-)
Post reply on HN