Designing Supportive Chatbots for Blood Donors

Healthcare systems worldwide rely on voluntary blood donations, as blood cannot be produced artificially, but is needed for many surgeries and treatments. In countries like South Africa or Ghana, currently less than 1 % of the population donates blood. Donor education, mobilisation and management are therefore crucial. Chatbots offer easy access to information for all types of donors as well as for blood services to educate (potential) donors. By applying the design science research approach and grounding our research on behaviour change models, we have developed a chatbot for all donor types in South Africa and Ghana. In this work, we present an instantiation of the chatbot and its positive evaluation with non-, first-time, lapsed and regular donors of both countries.