NHS Blood and Transplant sets out plan to save the NHS an additional £3 million a year by cutting the price of blood

This £1.85 per unit reduction will save the NHS £3 million a year - the equivalent of 100 newly qualified nurses or 258 hip replacement procedures. This means the price of blood is back to the same as it was in 2005.

The five year plan also outlines action to:

• Provide enhanced digital connections with blood donors to improve their experience before, during and after donation;

• Provide a higher quality of service for hospital customers and those who use NHS Blood and Transplant products;

• Match world-class performance in organ donation and increase the number of organs available for transplantation;

• Replace an aging IT infrastructure, migrate to cloud based services and replace the critical operational applications with more up to date technology

NHS Blood and Transplant will achieve these improvements and cost reductions over the next five years through continued development of new products and therapies to treat more patients, better integration and planning of the end-to-end blood supply chain and delivering high-quality, cost-effective therapies for NHS patients.

These actions will also build on the success of increasing deceased organ donation by 50% since 2008 by redesigning the NHS Organ Donor Register to reflect the legislation change in Wales around opt out - the biggest change to the register since its creation in 1994.

Commenting on the five year plan NHS Blood and Transplant Chief Executive, Ian Trenholm, said: "Our ambition is clear - to be the best organisation of our type in the world. Our purpose is to save and improve as many lives as possible. We are proud to be in a position where we can reduce the cost of blood to hospitals and we believe that we can,and should, do more to use our skills and capabilities to play a full part in 'Team NHS'.

"Our new plan builds on our track record of success in recent years, but is no less ambitious in our determination to further improve the services we provide. We are exploring ways we can support the NHS by sharing our expertise in areas such as Lean systems working, Marketing, bio-products manufacturing, quality assurance and logistics. A good example of this is our work as supply chain partner, supporting the 100,000 Genome project run by Genomics England. This 3-year initiative involves collecting samples and decoding 100,000 genomes to revolutionise patient treatment for rare disease, cancer and infectious disease.

"We want to be the first port of call for the NHS helping to reduce costs and save more lives."

Read the NHS Blood and Transplant Strategic Plan 2015 - 20, here.