Welcome to the inaugural issue of the online e-newsletter, The Network. Everyone at OneMatch is very excited about this project as it provides a clear line of communication between transplant hospitals, collection centres, stakeholders, patient groups, and community partners. We hope you will enjoy reading it and will consider being a contributor to this wide audience.

The theme for the first issue is "Bringing the Hematopoietic Stem Cell Community Closer by Informing, Engaging and Understanding What We Do." This may seem like a bold statement, but it signifies how each particular audience is crucial to the other's mutual success when serving patients and partners.

Understanding what you would like to see in Canada's first official online hematopoietic stem cell newsletter was the motivation for our research efforts during the summer of 2010. Your participation in this research helped us identify sections applicable to all audiences, while offering specific information we can share in the spirit of best practices and process improvements. Thank you to all of you who provided this feedback.

Medical Point of View offers an internal and external point-of-view around hematopoietic stem cells in Canada. With a standing column from our OneMatch medical director Dr. Dale Towns and guest submissions from our medical and scientific partners, this space is sure to keep you informed about many aspects of medical science around hematopoietic stem cells. This issue, we welcome Dr. Ahmad Galal as our guest commentator.

We anticipate one of our more popular articles will be submissions from transplant and collection centres across Canada. The article "Doctor, Donor, Lifesaver" provides a unique window on a featured transplant centre and its role in the stem cell community. Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto provides our first profile.

Informing partners and patient families on search parameters can be challenging at the best of times. Closing the Gap makes this information more understandable by offering insight to the search process.

Recruitment of healthy and committed unrelated stem cell donors continues to be one of OneMatch's highest priorities. In Community, we profile a community partner that has made a difference in its community and in Canada by increasing the enrolment of dedicated potential stem cell donors for our national and international customers. This issue, we profile OtherHalf, a non-profit organization started by a group of concerned Chinese Canadians to help increase the number of registrants of Chinese origin in the stem cell registry.

In Cornerstone, we discuss an up-and-coming part of our business at Canadian Blood Services: fund-raising. We explain how easy it is to provide a gift toward building Canada's stem cell network. We also highlight our journey to quality excellence by informing you of quality improvements and best practices of OneMatch and transplant hospitals.

We hope you enjoy this newsletter and encourage your feedback either through me or the general feedback link provided on this page. We want to build this newsletter into a publication you come back to and to which you yourself will consider contributing.

Together our community will grow.

See you again in the fall.

Sue Smith
Executive Director, OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network
Sue.smith@blood.ca