The Organ Shortage Epidemic: Why It's Time to Take Action
Join Me in Exploring the World of Organ Donation and Transplantation!!
Just a few days ago, I was reading Shakespeare in English class.. and thought back to when I read Romeo and Juliet, and the infamous quote, “To be or not to be, that is the question.”
While Shakespeare was talking about life or death, it could easily be applied to the world of organ transplantation. For millions, the reality is relying on the call of getting that life saving organ.
Unfortunately there just aren’t enough organs to go around, but why and is there a way we can help?
That's why I started Organ-ize: The Inner Workings of Organs, a newsletter all about exploring the ups and downs of organ donation and transplantation. I am Reeya, a 15 year old super interested in helping this epidemic.
Come join me on this wild ride as we uncover the fascinating world of organs and work together to make things better for everyone.
Riding The High: My Deep Dive 🌊
Let's face it - the world of organ donation and transplantation is a complicated and often difficult topic. There's a lot of demand for organs, but unfortunately, the supply simply cannot keep up. In the US alone, there are over 107,000 people waiting for an organ transplant, and the sad truth is that many of them will never receive one in time.
It's heartbreaking to think about how many people are suffering and dying every day, simply because there aren't enough organs to go around. And while some people might think that the solution is simple - just get more people to donate organs - it's not that easy. There are legal, ethical, and cultural factors at play, not to mention the complicated medical procedures involved in transplantation.
But despite all of these challenges, there are people out there working tirelessly to make a difference. Researchers are developing new technologies to help us better understand and preserve organs, policymakers are working to create more equitable systems for organ distribution, and individuals and organizations are advocating for increased awareness and education about organ donation.
By exploring the intricacies of the organ world, we can start to understand the challenges and opportunities that exist. My goal with this is to ensure that I fully grasp this industry on both the supply, demand, and solution side of this. I will be documenting my learnings in newsletters to actively pursue this journey.
The Supply and Demand Imbalance
The biggest factor in this industry is that there’s a lot of demand for organs but simply not enough supply. Just looking at the numbers they don’t equal out… 107,000 transplants need vs 39,000 that take place in the USA in a year.. Thats 68,000 that didn’t happen! Some people end up waiting for a super long time, or they might not even get a transplant at all. And on top of that, there are some people who can't even get a transplant because of medical reasons or logistical hurdles.
Approaching this problem: OrganLink 🤔
Back in January, I started looking into this problem, not realizing that this would be my next obsession. This hackathon idea brought so much more into my life, but what was the idea?
The Problem:
There’s work being done right now on creating artificial organs or genetically modifying organs from other animals, but all of this is kinda far off in the future, and the question that we wanted to ask was how can we use technology to reduce the number of organ rejections that are occurring, TODAY?
Organ transplants can be a life-saving procedure for those in need, but it’s not without its challenges. Sometimes the body considers a new organ to be a foreign object and decides to reject it, with 30% of transplanted organs getting the boot within the first year.
This make some patients being added to the waitlist again for another transplants.
Currently, when we try to match up organ donors and recipients, we use a series of factors such as blood type, body size, sickness, distance, tissue type, and time on the list.
However, even with all these factors taken into consideration, the body can still reject the organ if there is a mismatch in minor or non-major histocompatibility antigens. These antigens are unique to each person and based on their genetic code, making it a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
The solution:
OrganLink uses AI and blockchain technology to match donors and recipients with surgical precision which is a platform that administration side uses. It’s like having a dating app for organs, only with a much higher success rate and a lot less swiping left.
Our platform enables two technological components the first being blockchain and the second being AI.
Blockchain:
Our aim connects recipients and donors through giving them digital wallets which connect to the smart contract which would use the medical data and documents stored in the wallets to track the organs and use the results of the AI algorithm to match them to compatible donors and recipients. These 2 technologies together work to automate and secure the organ matching process while providing a transparent and unchangeable record of the transactions to increase the chances of a successful transplant.
AI:
To begin, a generic NLP model is used to read the genetic report documents, tokenize them and then feed the indexed reports into the Information Retrieval System. The system then works to extract the Query (information on the antigens) and then iterates several times to find relevant outputs. A regression model is then utilized to take the outputs as inputs alongside any prehistoric data regarding organ transplants to deduce the correlations between different antigens and bases in the genes. Finally, a Reinforcement Learning model is used to identify the most relevant factors in transplant rejection (essentially filtering the remaining out) allowing the system to optimize donor-recipient matching.
Next Steps 👣
Breakdown Demand of organs more
Why is there demand and what are main contributors?
What organs are most in demand?
Well, that's it for this edition of Organ-ize: The Inner Workings of Organs. Thanks for sticking with me as we delved into the complex world of organ transplantation. It's clear that there's a lot of work to be done in order to improve access to organs and save more lives.
So, if you want to continue learning about the latest advancements in organ technology and the challenges facing the organ donation and transplantation industry, be sure to subscribe to Organ-ize.
Thanks again for reading, and let's keep working towards a brighter future for organ donation and transplantation.