India faces one of the highest surgical and accident burdens in the world. Combined with a high prevalence of blood disorders, an efficient blood system should be a national priority. But when our team visited actual blood banks and hospitals in Pune, we found something deeply broken.
Hospitals had no idea what blood was available at nearby blood banks. Blood banks couldn't communicate with each other. The only government platform E-Raktakosh only listed government facilities and was difficult to navigate. Private hospitals were invisible to the system.
None of the existing platforms National Blood Transfusion Council, State Blood Transfusion Council, E-Raktakosh, or Friends 2 Support addressed the hospital and blood bank coordination problem. Everyone was donor-centric. No one was building for the institutions that needed to talk to each other in real time.
Before touching Figma, we sketched everything by hand. Multiple iterations of the dashboard, find blood page, and navigation.
Before defining features, we mapped the system. The blood supply problem was not just a UI problem it was a coordination failure with reinforcing loops that made things worse over time.
Hospitals take the symptomatic fix calling others individually. This workaround prevents the real solution (a shared live database) from ever being built.
Contacting other hospitals solves the immediate shortage but scattered data and unclear timelines create a delay loop that makes every next shortage worse.
Hand sketches first to lock in structure and flow, then greyscale Figma to finalise layout no colour until the information architecture was right.
