)
)
We’ve all been celebrating a major fist bump moment at HQ recently…and that is the blood donation app that we developed with the American Red Cross has hit a record breaking 9 MILLION appointments booked through it! Hitting this particular milestone is especially sweet, and I’ll explain why. Sit back, relax and let me take you back in time to when our blood journey began at 3 Sided Cube…
Where we started
Over a decade ago (time flies when you are building tech for good!), the American Red Cross came to us with a problem. They wanted a digital solution to combat the barriers that potential and existing donors were facing. The process of donors having to call to make an appointment for donation became a sticking point in the process and the web platform just wasn’t performing as they would have liked.
One litre of blood can save up to three lives so it was vital that the solution was as seamless as possible.
So we built a revolutionary solution that transformed the donation process, and has had over a million downloads, helped to save thousands of lives and also won several international awards including a Webby for Best Health App. Donors can track their blood and see the hospital that it ends up at and when it has arrived. Being able to obtain this level of detail has been essential in encouraging donors to keep donating as they get to appreciate the lives they help save – providing a reminder that ordinary people do extraordinary things when they give blood.
You can read more about that project here
It has been such an amazing journey building that life-saving app and expanding upon it with continuous improvement over the years and that ability to constantly iterate over the years has gotten us to this point.
Where we’re at
Due to the impact of the Covid-19, nearly 4,500 blood drives were cancelled, as businesses and college campuses were closed, which resulted in over 150,000 fewer blood donations. The need for blood is constant across the US and this meant that The American Red Cross was facing severe blood shortages. Because of the shortage they were facing, the American Red Cross started to actively campaign across their channels to encourage more donations.
This meant that our team needed to ensure that the blood donations app could withhold an extreme increase in donations. With over 300k blood appointments booked in January (the most ever booked through the app), it is clear that the campaign massively increased the amount of booked appointments, which is an amazing achievement at this time and because of all of our CI cycles, the app was robust enough to handle the traffic and a record breaking amount of donors could make their appointments easily.
The improvement rate has been remarkable. 18 months ago, we were happy to get 100,000 appointments a month, now we've hit 300k bookings for the month of January. All the more crucial given the extra need for blood during a pandemic. We are honoured to support the American Red Cross and are very proud of the app we’ve built for them. Richard Strachan, MD 3 Sided Cube
As one of our oldest clients, it has been such an incredible experience working alongside the American Red Cross over the last ten years. We have been able to forge a great relationship and as a result of that, built a digital product that saves lives. It doesn’t get better than that when our entire mission is to get out of bed every day and build products that are going to change millions of lives for the better.
Shout us a holla if you are interested in building tech for good with us!
Published on 31 January 2022, last updated on 1 February 2022