What began as a high school friendship between Elorm Addipa ’24 and Dr. Ellis Owusu-Dabo has evolved into a joint effort to address a challenge in Ghana’s healthcare system: getting blood to health facilities when patients need it.
Together with Dr. Kwaku Afari-Djan, the two are co-founders of Bloodline, a venture seeking to improve access to blood through a service that helps healthcare facilities source and transport blood to where it is needed.
In 2025, Ghana collected 204,000 units of blood against a recommended annual requirement of 308,000. While shortages remain a challenge, Dr. Owusu-Dabo identified another problem during his medical training: even when blood is available, getting it to the facility where it is needed can be difficult.
That challenge helped shape Bloodline, but the founders still had to determine a viable business model. Their approach evolved during the Ashesi Health and Care Initiative Incubator, where they initially explored a model centred on blood itself. However, blood could not be sold as a commercial product. Engagement with the National Blood Service helped clarify where Bloodline could contribute.
“We now had to offer a service,” says Addipa, who contributes to the venture’s financial management, pricing, payment decisions and operations.
The shift placed logistics at the centre of Bloodline’s model. Working with the founders, incubator coach Dr. Paulina Mensah helped them examine how blood moves through the healthcare system, including the gap between established procedures and the realities faced by health facilities.
“They needed to map out what happens when a patient is in need of blood and there is none at the facility they’re at,” she says. “There is what is ‘officially’ supposed to happen, and there is what happens on the ground.”
Mensah recalls an ambulance being dispatched to another facility to collect just three units of blood. While such a journey may meet an urgent need, it also highlights the cost and inefficiency of relying on ad hoc arrangements. Bloodline aims to provide a more dependable way for healthcare institutions to transport blood, supported by systems they can trust.
Building a digital and delivery system
Bloodline says its digital system is fully operational, and the team is working to establish a live feed from the National Blood Service following the completion of its planned onboarding process.
The system is intended to give participating facilities real-time visibility into available blood inventories. Individual units are coded and labelled, allowing the team to track available stock and its location.
Since launching in July 2026, the team has acquired motorbikes and cold-chain boxes, completed test runs and trained riders to handle blood appropriately in preparation for full operations.
However, having the infrastructure in place is only part of the challenge. Healthcare facilities must also be confident that the service can deliver blood safely and reliably.
“In healthcare, trust is non-negotiable,” Mensah says. “People will ask, ‘What if things go wrong?’”
That question will become increasingly important as Bloodline enters its next phase. The venture signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Blood Service in October 2026, with the onboarding of pilot facilities in the Greater Accra Region expected to follow.
Its initial target is to work with 10 healthcare institutions within the first three months and deliver blood between facilities within 10 to 30 minutes of receiving a request.
For the founders, the immediate task is to turn the system they have developed into a dependable service capable of responding when patients need blood most.
