Reimagining the Future of Transfusion Medicine to Departments of Substances of Human Origin in India: Vision 2026 and Beyond

Dear Sir, Over the last few decades, blood banks in India have evolved into the Department of Transfusion Medicine.The evolution occurred from a laboratory-based specialty focusing primarily on blood collection, testing, storage, quality management, and transfusion support for multidisciplinary disciplines, into a clinical branch supporting therapeutic apheresis, patient blood management, advanced immunohematology, hematopoietic stem cell collection, cellular therapies, and translational research.This evolution was a shared vision that transfusion medicine would no longer be confined to the traditional practice of blood banking but would become a comprehensive clinical and translational specialty.1,2 Yet despite this remarkable growth, organizational structures in many healthcare systems continue to reflect a model developed decades ago, when blood transfusion was the principal therapeutic application of human-derived biological productsThe evolution of blood banks to transfusion medicine departments across India has adopted and incorporated many clinical services.Presently, many transfusion medicine departments support hematopoietic stem cell collections, stem cell product manipulations (plasma/red cell reduction, cryopreservation, cell selection/enrichment), perform therapeutic plasma/red cell exchanges, and provide clinical consultations for complex immunohematology and coagulopathy/bleeding scenarios.Many departments across the country have integrated diagnostic facilities, which include transplant immunology, an advanced immunohematology lab and molecular blood grouping labs.These departments are also providing the safest layer of blood safety with nucleic acid testing of blood and exploring the options of implementing pathogen reduction technology in the country.Presently, many transfusion medicine departments are also providing clinical inpatient and outpatient consultation for a variety of hematological disorders.The natural next layer of expansion incorporates emerging disciplines that are already converging with transfusion medicine.These include development of immune effector cell therapies for newer applications, evidence-based use of regenerative medicine/ stem cell therapies, validation of gene-modified cellular products, development of platelet/granulocyte immunobiology modalities, precision diagnostics and intervention tools, application of artificial intelligence in clinical decision making, clinical-grade cell processing laboratories, with standardized global labelling systems such as ISBT 128, representing the future landscape of biological