Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The NSF celebrates kidney exchange

Over at Science Nation, the NSF  published a short news article yesterday, together with a video, to  note the success of NSF funded research in helping establish kidney exchange (also called kidney paired donation, KPD).

Here's the article:
New Software Matches More Kidney Donations, Faster: Game theory and market dynamics inspire new software that streamlines complicated matches

"With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Harvard University economist Alvin Roth helped develop a suite of computer programs that match living kidney donors with recipients. His team includes market designer Itai Ashlagi and operations researcher David Gamarnik at MIT and economists Utku Unver and Tayfun Sonmez at Boston College."
...
"Transplant surgeon Michael Rees at the University of Toledo Medical center is CEO of the Alliance for Paired Donation (see www.paireddonation.org) [says]
..."game theory and market design have come together to find practical solutions for kidney disease patients."

 And here's the 2-minute video:
(Key question in the video, read in an incredulous tone: "What's an economist doing organizing kidney transplants?" Answer: "Turns out, an understanding of game theory and market dynamics is key...")

3 comments:

Francesco said...

What do you think about Facebook initiative (the possibility to indicate your organ donor status)? Can it improve the efficiency in the kidney organ allocation?

jccc said...

As long as changing the facebook status represents a credible commitment, it might help. But I'm skeptical, it probably would represent for a majority a small warm-glow strategy for her friends to look at. Maybe the http://www.paireddonation.org people could team up with facebook and create a campaign to contact those people. Or better, everytime we see a friend who changed her status, we send her the link http://www.paireddonation.org

Perth property said...

Hello. How I pray that you will continue help other people and change lives. There are a lot of them who are in need of your help.