David Jacobs, a technologist who has worked for everyone from Macromedia to Microsoft, had permanent kidney failure and received a successful kidney transplant in December 2004. His kidneys failed in the spring of 2001 and Jacobs spent 3.5 years on the cadaver kidney waiting list and 1.5 years on dialysis.
Seeing an algorithmic solution to the problem of organ donations, Jacobs set out to implement a solution for complex paired organ donation through his company, Silverstone Solutions.
Paired organ donation is the process by which a person who needs an organ, call her patient A, has a donor—donor A—that isn’t a compatible match for her but is for someone else. Someone else, call him patient B, who needs an organ has a donor, call her donor B—that isn’t a compatible match for him. Donor A donates an organ to patient B; donor B donates an organ to patient A and everyone goes home happy. As you can see these organ pairs can quickly get quite complex. That’s where the mathematical algorithms come in. Screening test results for blood types, antigens, age, and myriad other factors is best left to computers.
Jacobs launched his paired organ donation software on Monday at the DEMO conference. Jacobs told Don Clark, writing for the Wall Street Journal, that his system has already been used by a San Francisco hospital to match 23 pairs of donors and recipients.
0 responses. Comments closed for this article.