MHealth Technology as a Tool to Promote Blood Donation Joélia Rodrigues da Silva 1 , Christina César Praça Brasil 1 , Bruno Praça Brasil 2 , Larissa Barbosa Paiva 2 , Vinicius Freire de Oliveira 3 , José Eurico de Vasconcelos Filho 3 and Francisco Wandemberg Rodrigues dos Santos 2 1 Postgraduate Program in Public Health, Universidade de Fortaleza, Ave. Washington Soares, Fortaleza-CE, Brazil 2 School of Medicine, Universidade de Fortaleza, Ave. Washington Soares, Fortaleza-CE, Brasil 3 Information Technology Application Center, Universidade de Fortaleza, Ave. Washington Soares, Fortaleza –CE, Brazil Keywords: Blood Bonation, Health Promotion, Mobile Applications. Abstract: The blood donation scenario and its effect on the treatment of patients with hematological diseases and in emergency situations is a constant concern in the health area, requiring guided actions that allow improvements in the donor recruitment and retention processes, and therefore, the increase and maintenance of blood donation. To meet this social demand, an exploratory, qualitative study was carried out with the objective of creating a cell phone application that supports blood donor recruitment and fidelization through prevalent and interactive communication and technological resources, generating social engagement. The new information technologies have been increasingly disseminating in the several social settings as a way of collecting, recording, producing, processing and sharing data and information. A research was carried out to identify the existence of applications that support the activities of the Brazilian blood donation units, integrated to the database and with gamification resources, with none being identified with these characteristics. The proposed tool has differential characteristics in relation to the applications available in the market and may be effective in blood donor recruitment and in supporting health promotion. The application has a deadline of November 2017 to start being used. 1 INTRODUCTION Blood donation is discussed worldwide as a social strategy for the maintenance of collective health. It must be exercised voluntarily, altruistically and anonymously to minimize the risks of contamination and transfusion reaction in patients assisted by the health system. According to the World Health Organization- WHO (Brasil, 2016), only 1.8% of the world's population donates blood, whereas the ideal would be 3 to 5%. In Brazil, this percentage was 1.73% in 2014 and showed a decrease of 0.15% in 2015, showing a percentage of 1.58%. These calculations were based on the demographic projection of the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) for the period of the year 2000 to the year 2030 (IBGE, 2016). Accentuating this scenario, data from the Ministry of Health-MH declare that between 2003 and 2013 there was a 84% increase in the number of organ transplants in the country (Brasil, 2014). Some indexes of concern focus on diseases such as cancer, which require blood infusion as part of the treatment. According to global estimates by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC / WHO), in 2012 there were 14.1 million new cases and a total of 8.2 million cancer deaths worldwide (Brasil, 2014). By 2030, the projected global burden is 21.4 million new cases of cancer and 13.2 million deaths worldwide due to the disease. The MH points out an increase of 6.89% in the number of transfusions in 2014 in relation to the previous year (Brasil, 2015). Other relevant data are related to the health care network in the country, which includes the increase in the number of hospital beds, resulting in an increase in the high-complexity number of procedures and, consequently, of transfusions. Between 2003 and 2013, the number of emergency and elective surgeries Silva, J., Brasil, C., Brasil, B., Paiva, L., Oliveira, V., Filho, J. and Santos, F. MHealth Technology as a Tool to Promote Blood Donation. DOI: 10.5220/0006597804710477 In Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2018) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF, pages 471-477 ISBN: 978-989-758-281-3 Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved 471