During this same period,
healthcare in the United States increased at an
annual 7%. In terms of the economics of blood, this
can largely be divided into two distinct components.
- First, there is the unit price of blood which is increasing, as indicated previously on an annual basis.
This increase is driven by the need to introduce new testing, such as nucleic acid testing for West Nile virus,
antibody testing for Chagas disease, bacterial testing, and more recently, anti HLA antibody testing.
In the future, processing steps, such as pathogen reduction and/or A and B antigen stripping will
result in an increase in unit price.
- Second, the total volume is also important and this will increase as the population ages, as greater than
50% of all blood is transfused to the older population (>65 years).