Lifesaving connections--communications, coordination, and transplantation.

Thousands of people suffer and die, and numerous biomedical experiments are cancelled or scaled back each year because of an unnecessary shortage of organs and tissues for transplantation and research. Exacerbating the shortage is the absence of effective national coordination of organ and tissue procurement and the lack of systematic attention given to educating the public and the medical profession about transplantation and donation. The National Organ Transplant Act, passed by Congress in 1984, was an incomplete, narrowly focused, and inadequately funded effort to address these issues. We recommend the more effective use of advanced communications technologies and skills to assure a unified, concerted effort to bring the benefits of donated organs and tissues to greater numbers of Americans. We must ensure that advances in computers, telecommunications, mass media, and interpersonal communications are employed to ensure the coordination of procurement agencies with each other and with physicians and biomedical researchers, the systematic education of physicians and families, and the increased involvement of the public. Realization of the full potential of transplantation will not be possible without a renewed spirit of cooperation, better funding, and sustained political support from both the public and policymakers.