ISTARE
ISTARE stands for International Surveillance of Transfusion-Associated Reactions and Events in donors and recipients of blood components. It was developed in 2008 to record national haemovigilance data using common definitions in order to allow international comparisons, information sharing and benchmarking.
As of 2016, 125 annual aggregated national data sets had been received from 25 countries, covering 132.8 million blood components issued with 102,955 recipient adverse reactions and 594,477 donor adverse reactions reported.
Despite the success of ISTARE, the collected data have limitations which include inconsistent application of definitions and insufficient granularity of the (aggregate) data. A 2019 membership survey endorsed and supported continuing collection of haemovigilance data by IHN. Data collection into ISTARE was frozen and a Task Force was convened to direct redevelopment of an “ISTARE 2” database. The first module of this database will consist of data on the HV systems.
If you have questions about how a policy-maker or researcher might be able to utilize the aggregate data collected (2006-2016), please email the IHN at secretariat@ihn-org.com for further information.