Inspiration The inspiration for RaktDaan struck close to home. A few months ago, a close friend's family member was in a critical accident and urgently needed A-negative blood. We witnessed the panic and desperation firsthand—frantic calls to friends, chaotic posts on social media, and sifting through unverified online contacts. The existing system was fragmented and inefficient. We realized that in an age of instant connectivity, there had to be a better, more reliable way to connect willing donors with those in desperate need. This personal crisis fueled our mission: to build a platform that leverages technology to bridge this life-threatening gap and create a streamlined, trustworthy network for blood donation.
What it does RaktDaan is a web-based platform designed to be a life-saving bridge between voluntary blood donors and patients in urgent need. Our application serves two primary user groups:
For Recipients: A user can quickly sign up and create an urgent blood request by specifying the required blood type, number of units, hospital location, and contact information. Our system then instantly identifies and alerts registered, eligible donors within a specified geographic radius.
For Donors: Volunteers can register themselves by providing their blood type, location, and contact details. They receive real-time notifications (via SMS and on-platform alerts) about nearby blood requests. They can then view the request details and choose to accept, connecting them directly with the patient's family to coordinate the donation.
The platform also includes a feature to track a donor's eligibility, automatically making them unavailable for 90 days after a donation to ensure their health and safety.
How we built it RaktDaan is a full-stack web application built with a focus on speed, reliability, and ease of use.
Frontend: We used React.js with Vite for a fast, responsive, and modern user interface. The component-based architecture allowed us to build a clean and maintainable UI. For styling, we used Tailwind CSS.
Backend: The server-side logic is powered by Node.js and the Express.js framework. We built a robust REST API to handle user authentication, blood requests, and donor matching.
Database: We chose MongoDB as our database for its flexibility and scalability, using Mongoose as the ODM to model our application data. Its geospatial querying capabilities were crucial for implementing the "find nearby donors" feature.
APIs & Services:
Google Maps API: To handle location services and calculate distances between donors and hospitals.
Twilio API: To send critical, real-time SMS notifications to donors, ensuring that urgent requests are never missed.
JWT (JSON Web Tokens): For secure user authentication and session management.
Deployment: The application is deployed on Vercel (for the frontend) and Heroku (for the backend), ensuring high availability and performance.
Challenges we ran into One of the biggest technical challenges was implementing the geospatial query efficiently. Searching for all donors within a certain radius for every new request could be slow and resource-intensive. We overcame this by creating a 2dsphere index on the location coordinates in our MongoDB collection, which drastically improved the query performance.
Another major hurdle was non-technical: ensuring the legitimacy of blood requests to prevent misuse of the platform and donor data. To mitigate this, we implemented a simple verification step requiring users to upload a photo of the doctor's formal request letter.
Finally, ensuring instant and reliable delivery of notifications was critical. We had to design a resilient notification system that had fallbacks in case one method (like an in-app notification) failed.
Accomplishments that we're proud of We are incredibly proud of building a fully functional, end-to-end application that has the potential for real-world, life-saving impact. The core feature—matching a request to nearby donors and notifying them in seconds—works flawlessly. We successfully integrated multiple third-party APIs (Google Maps and Twilio) to create a feature-rich experience. Most importantly, we designed a user interface that is simple and intuitive, ensuring that even someone in a panic can navigate the app easily to make a request.
What we learned This project was a tremendous learning experience. On the technical side, we gained deep hands-on experience with the MERN stack, geospatial data handling in MongoDB, and integrating external services. We also learned the importance of proper database indexing for performance.
Beyond the code, we learned about product management, the importance of user experience (UX) design in a high-stakes situation, and the ethical considerations of handling sensitive user data. We learned to collaborate effectively as a team, using Git for version control and breaking down complex problems into manageable tasks.
What's next for RaktDaan Our vision for RaktDaan is to make it the go-to platform for blood donation across India. Our next steps include:
Developing a Mobile App: Creating native Android and iOS applications to improve accessibility and enable push notifications.
Blood Bank Integration: Partnering with local blood banks to display their real-time blood stock levels.
Organizing Donation Drives: Adding a feature for organizations to register and promote blood donation camps.
Gamification for Donors: Introducing a rewards system (badges, points) to recognize and encourage frequent donors, building a strong and motivated community.
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