“We might be looking for the only matching donor worldwide that could save a patient’s life.”
Lisa Cawley, Donor Liaison Manager
Anthony Nolan
The customer
Every 13 minutes, someone in the UK is diagnosed with a blood cancer or blood disorder. For many, a stem cell transplant is their best chance of survival. Anthony Nolan, a UK charity with 50 years of expertise, is dedicated to giving these patients hope by matching them with life-saving stem cell donors. But finding the right donor is only the beginning, the real challenge is ensuring that every potential match can be reached, quickly and reliably, when it matters most.
The challenge
Anthony Nolan’s register holds over 915,000 potential donors and acts as a lifeline for patients in urgent need. But the reality is that people move, change numbers, and emails go stale. Every year, millions of records become outdated. Out-of-date contact details can mean a missed match, and potentially a lost life.
- Data decay: Inaccurate addresses, old phone numbers, and invalid emails make it harder to reach donors. In the UK alone, 14.4 million letters are misdelivered or lost each year, with 11% of the population moving annually and one in three people changing their email address annually, the scale of the challenge is clear.
- Environmental impact: Misdelivered mail and unnecessary print runs waste resources and drive up costs and carbon emissions. Each posted letter emits up to 25g of CO₂, and storing unused “dark data” adds to the environmental impact.
- Real-world consequences: When a donor’s tissue matches a patient, every minute counts. Out-of-date contact details can mean a missed opportunity to save a life.
Time is of the essence. We might be looking for the only matching donor worldwide that could save this patient’s life. Without a transplant, patients will die. Getting donors to update their contact details is a real struggle, especially younger people – who are also our best donors.
Lisa Cawley, Donor Liaison Manager, Anthony Nolan
The solution
Anthony Nolan needed a holistic approach* to data quality and donor tracing. That’s where GBG came in:
- A full database healthcheck was conducted to identify the scale and nature of data decay.
- Incorrect contacts flagged and removed:
- Address cleansing: 5.8% of records removed as incorrect
- Residency validation: ~39% flagged as outdated or gone away
- Email hygiene: 10% of emails deleted as invalid
- Dark data reduction: 4.85MB of unused contact data deleted
- Verification efforts were prioritised by scoring donors on factors like age, sex, and ethnicity - focusing on those most likely to be a match.
- Advanced donor tracing was conducted using GBG’s search tools to find donors previously impossible to locate, moving beyond basic Electoral Roll look-ups and letters to using a network of over 1.5 billion interlinked records.
- Multi-channel outreach is a future focus, including text campaigns to non-responders, and learning which channels donors prefer for future communications.
*This is combined data from multiple projects.
The outcome
This combined approach delivers measurable results for people and the planet, enabling Anthony Nolan to deliver their impact more effectively:
- Four people a day get a second chance at life thanks to Anthony Nolan’s register. Faster, smarter matches mean more donors reached, more lives saved.
- Environmental and financial wins:
- 6.8 tonnes of CO₂ avoided (equivalent to driving 26,000+ miles or charging 170,000 smartphones – assuming 25g of CO₂ per letter posted)
- £36,295 will be saved in postage (Assuming £0.80 postage per item)
- Continuous improvement: Data health checks reveal where to focus (e.g. younger donors), and the charity is learning which channels donors prefer for future outreach.
Anthony Nolan’s vision is to help everyone who needs a lifesaving transplant. With GBG’s assistance, they are getting closer every day.
Be the Match. Save a Life.
You could be the chance someone needs.
Join the Anthony Nolan register today: https://www.anthonynolan.org/register
Read about how GBG helps Anthony Nolan to cutting carbon through smarter data here: https://www.loqate.com/en-gb/customers/anthony-nolan/
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