The Ontario Online Donor Registry is a website where Ontario residents, age 16 and older, can register their consent to be an organ and tissue donor. This registry was created to help ease questions and ambiguities with organ donor wishes. The virtual registry also increases Ontario donations with increased accessibility. The registration process can be done through beadonor.ca. Online donor registries have also become popular in the United States, where one can register through Donate Life America; Malaysia, registering through their National Transplant Registry; and Saudi Arabia, registering through the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation.
History
In 2000, the Ontario government created the Trillium Gift of Life Network for the role of organizing Ontario’s organ and tissue registry. The purpose of creating the Trillium Gift of Life Network was to increase organ and tissue donation across Ontario and improve the process of registering. The Trillium Gift of Life Network also is in place to support health care professionals in implementing decisions surrounding organ and tissue donation.
An online organ donation registry through the Trillium Gift of Life Network became available June 14, 2011 known as Be a Donor. The registry was created to save lives and decrease transplant wait times. Other initiatives to promote this registry include to raise awareness and information, which permits Ontarians to make decisions about organ and tissue donation. Providing awareness about the online organ donation registry will make organ donation convenient and help to create a system for individuals who may be interested in this decision but unaware of how to register. Once an individual is registered on the Be a Donor site, their decision is recorded in the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care database.
The increased awareness created by Be a Donor in Ontario caused the online registry to crash on June 15, 2011 due to the numerous responses and over-subscriptions of Ontarians who wanted to sign up to be donors.
Operation
The online donor registry was created in order to document an individual's desire to donate their own organs at their time of death. The new registry, which was announced in 1997 in British Columbia, has allowed for remote and electronic accessibility. Prior to 1997, an individual’s decision to donate was indicated by the presence of a decal on one’s driver’s license. The difficulty was that people had to put the decal on their license, which was likely considered to be inconvenient. Also, in the event of an accident, it was not always easy to find a person’s license. A vast improvement brought in by the new online registry is the simplicity in determining a person’s donation wish at the time of an accident or other serious injury, which would otherwise be difficult to determine.
As of June 2011, the Trillium Gift of Life Network made it possible for Ontarians to register online. This will ease the process of registration and minimize the shortage of donors. After observing the improvement that both British Columbia and Ontario have started to experience, Manitoba is expected to follow suit and implement its own registry.
In order to register consent in Ontario for organ donation, the individual must have two important criteria. These criteria require the individual to be at least the age of 16 years as well as have a valid Ontario Health Card Number and version code. Once an individual registers, their information is recorded into the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care’s database and version code.
Media coverage
The Toronto Star, CBC News, and CTV News have publicized the Ontario online organ donation registry, among other local newspapers. The registry has received much praise from its former in-person registration at ServiceOntario center and mail-in consent form. According to Auditor General Jim McCarter, 40 hospitals were not required to alert Trillium Gift of Life Network that they had patients on life support who required donors. Be A Donor will help people have a more complete life, as exemplified by Consonni, whose life was on hold for four years for a liver transplant.