SHOT 5 Year Strategy 2025 – 2029

Full SHOT strategy with measureables 2025
SHOT has identified three strategic priorities for the next 5 years. To aid achievement of these priorities SHOT has identified 6 supporting strategies. Each supporting strategy is separated into aims and actions to help identify the key aims and the associated actions required to achieve these goals
Digital Strategy
AIMS
- To improve feedback to and from haemovigilance reporters, enhance user experience and continue to work collaboratively with the MHRA, as the regulatory body, to streamline reporting
- Review, regularly update and improve accessibility of the resources on the SHOT website to optimise learning from haemovigilance
- Regularly monitor and update the SHOT mobile applications and website
- Optimise use of digital resources, including social media to promote haemovigilance and key transfusion safety messages
- Continue using digital tools to enhance haemovigilance activities, promote interaction and consider new emerging digital technologies e.g., artificial intelligence
- Streamline SHOT process documents and resources to support effective haemovigilance activities
ACTIONS
- Improve implementation of pre-transfusion TACO risk-assessment actions by establishing a mechanism to provide a monthly feedback loop for TACO cases where management was suboptimal
- Evaluate feedback received from reporters and implement actions where appropriate through formal and informal routes
- Explore trending of withdrawn reports, bi-directional queries, and category transfers
- Verification of interface with Safety Connect
- Work towards improving accessibility of resources on SHOT website as per ‘Accessibility road map’
- Quarterly review of digital analytics to inform future activities
- Annual review of content for MyTransfusion App, with urgent issues being addressed more frequently.
- Evaluate appropriateness and explore options of additional social media platforms
- Engage with the social media team to help promote key events, messages, and resources
- Develop a communication and promotion strategy for haemovigilance activities
- Continue use of interactive tools and explore new methods for enhancing learning from available haemovigilance resources
- Explore and pilot use of Artificial Intelligence in haemovigilance
- Development of decision-making algorithms to aid reporting
- Organise a SHOT team workshop to understand, condense and streamline internal process documents
Educational Strategy
AIMS
- Continue to develop and update educational resources in a variety of formats to address key haemovigilance topics, optimise uptake among healthcare professionals and assess impact of haemovigilance activities on transfusion safety
- Regularly review and update the human factors and ergonomics training toolkit and deliver human factors in transfusion courses for healthcare staff
- Obtain accreditation for the SHOT human factors in transfusion course from the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors
- Enhance and respond to educational needs feedback from reporters about haemovigilance resources through a variety of communication channels
- Collaborate with current and other potential external stakeholders to promote SHOT key safety messages, streamline and facilitate implementation of recommendations from the Annual SHOT Reports; share learning and support implementation of the recommendations from the Infected Blood Inquiry report
ACTIONS
- Promote and improve uptake of updated resources through SHOT platforms
- Plan to deliver 2 -3 human factors in transfusion courses per year; review and submit the current Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors application for accreditation
- Actively seek feedback from reporters through surveys, webinar polls, educational events, and ad hoc communication.
- Regularly request NHSBT digital team feedback from SHOT e-learning packages and videos; Develop internal processes for recording decisions relating to feedback received from various sources
- Review and action feedback as relevant and where possible to individual reporters
- Working with implementation signs, health economists and representatives from national bodies, simplify and streamline recommendations in the Annual SHOT Report to maximise implementation
- Obtain accreditation to issue National Patient Safety Alerts, develop resources to promote learning from the Infected Blood Inquiry and support workstreams to facilitate effective implementation of recommendations from the report
- Plan and design collaborative activities e.g. webinars, workshops, educational courses ; including supporting ad hoc requests for collaborative educational events and continue to create educational SHOT videos in collaboration with the NHSBT digital team
- Attend and actively participate in national and international conferences
- Continue to host an annual SHOT symposium and session at annual BBTS conference
- Using qualitative and quantitative indicators to measure impact of SHOT activities
Innovation and Research Strategy
AIMS
- Drive, participate in and contribute to research in haemovigilance to inform evidence-based practice
- Lead, promote and support innovation and share best practice in transfusion
- Collaborate with national and international organisations to improve and promote haemovigilance activities and benchmarking
- Continue to work with countries where haemovigilance systems are not fully established and share experiences and expertise from SHOT to help improve transfusion safety
- Endeavour to explore and support innovations in transfusion and haemovigilance
* International Haemovigilance Network (IHN), International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) and World Health Organisation (WHO)
ACTIONS
- Annually review the reporting questionnaire to reflect current changes in practice
- Contribute to the development of national transfusion guidelines and policies
- Utilise SHOT data to inform and write publications to raise awareness of transfusion issues
- Work collaboratively with external research fellows
- Develop, maintain and update SHOT related digital platforms to promote and share good practice
- Participate in and provide feedback to NHS educational projects and programmes
- Present and communicate SHOT data at national and international conferences
- SHOT representation at national and international working groups across different areas of transfusion and haemovigilance
- Collaborate with IHN, ISBT and WHO* to support the development of haemovigilance through workshops, sharing resources, surveys, and presentations
- Provide support and opportunities for non-UK healthcare professionals to work with the SHOT team to contribute to haemovigilance activities and develop educational resources
- Actively seek opportunities for learning advancements in transfusion (technologies, practices) and consider how to apply in the haemovigilance activities. For example, scenario-based activities using interactive software
- Signpost and help promote innovative practices from other parts of healthcare to increase application
People Strategy
AIMS
- Improve succession planning, representation, recruitment and accountability processes for the Steering Group and Working Expert Group members
- Continue to build resilience within the SHOT team, explore innovative solutions to improve capacity with well-defined job roles and responsibilities to achieve core and aspirational activities
- Expand, collect, and use haemovigilance data to identify and effectively address health inequalities to support best practice in transfusion
- Engage and partner with patients and donors to inform and influence SHOT safety messages and haemovigilance activities
ACTIONS
- Regularly review membership and attendance of the SHOT Steering Group (SG) and Working Expert Group (WEG) members; biennial one to one meetings with members to explore opportunities and address any issues
- Timely escalation of concerns related to haemovigilance issues with involvement of relevant SG and WEG members
- Continue to provide opportunities for interested NHS staff (trainees and non-trainees) to get involved and contribute to SHOT activities
- Explore options for collaborative working with clinical and laboratory transfusion staff across the UK
- Consider collecting data on ethnicity and postcode for transfusion recipients involved in incidents reported to SHOT to help identify and address any health inequalities. This would also involve discussions with Data Privacy team to understand feasibility and actions needed
- Continue to highlight patient cohorts at higher risks of transfusion safety incidents. For example, patients with haemoglobinopathies, shared care and transplants
- Continue to engage and actively seek additional opportunities to partner with patient representatives and blood donors as appropriate to help optimise safety messages.
- Release, promote and maintain the MyTransfusion App with the help of patient representatives involved in the development
- Regularly seek feedback from patient and donor representatives about their involvement in haemovigilance activities
Financial Strategy
AIMS
- Effective use of available finance to support haemovigilance activities and avoid unnecessary expenditure
- Continue to explore funding options from various sources or organisations to help develop free to access haemovigilance educational resources or activities
- Invest in cost-effective solutions and explore innovative digital platforms for sharing the SHOT data
- Explore strategies to streamline the content of the Annual SHOT Report by presenting information in a concise and engaging format thereby reducing costs for design and development
ACTIONS
- Regular or at least quarterly review with the finance business partner to have real time information and updates about expenditure and available budget
- Regularly review expenditure to reduce unnecessary costs
- Continue to submit requests from funding support from NHS England through NHS Blood and Transplant commissioning cycle to support the development of educational resources
- Regularly explore other funding options, for example, educational grants through other organisations and support for travel and accommodation for in person events from inviting organisations
- Continue to have mutual agreements with professional organisations for stands at events and presentations
- Proactively explore new, innovative, and cost-effective digital platforms to support SHOT educational and haemovigilance activities. For example, Dendrite dashboards, AI chatbots and social media platforms
- Continue to work with SHOT Working Expert Group members and designers to reduce production costs for the Annual SHOT Reports
Sustainability Strategy
AIMS
- Follow and implement cost-effective solutions to ensure sustainability of materials used to support haemovigilance activities
- Ensure all the strategies and actions above support our sustainability strategy
- Evaluate, measure, and minimise carbon footprint as much as feasible to support the NHS net zero strategy
ACTIONS
- Continue to explore and use merchandise made from sustainable material to help promote safety messages from SHOT
- Endeavour to ensure that events and courses from SHOT are environmentally responsible and economically viable.
- Ensure that sustainability is a key factor for consideration in all haemovigilance activities including the Annual SHOT Reports
- Reduce carbon footprint wherever practically possible by minimising travel and maximising the use of digital platforms
- Continue to explore and use merchandise made from sustainable material to help promote safety messages from SHOT
- Work with the sustainability team at NHSBT to calculate impact and identify additional measures which can be taken
How will we measure success?
We will use an integrated approach with quantitative and qualitative metrics to measure impact and success of our activities. These will include but not limited to haemovigilance participation data, analytics for website and App, successful accreditation of SHOT to be able to issue National Patient Safety Alerts, accreditation of our ‘Human Factors in Transfusion’ courses by the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors. The impact of changes with the SHOT reporting portal/Dendrite will be monitored based on the feedback received from reporters and completion rates for reports.
For our educational sessions, we will use participation metrics such as attendance rates, and engagement rates as well as feedback from learners obtained through formal and informal routes. We will also assess reach and accessibility by reviewing the number of users/attendees; diversity of participants where such data has been provided and number of resources distributed or downloaded. We aim to support learning by ensuring self-assessments for all new educational resources released. Changes in the trends and numbers of transfusion incidents reported especially avoidable errors and near misses will be assessed as potentially a long-term impact of all haemovigilance activities.
We will review progress against our strategy and planned activities regularly at team meetings aiming to address issues arising in a timely manner. We will provide regular (at least annual) updates at SHOT Steering group and Working Expert Group meetings and the UK Forum meetings.