You may have actually given blood at your local blood bank. This is another area related to transfusion services. The blood bank is not actually a bank. It is a facility that screens donors to help us keep a safe blood supply. They draw units of blood from the donors. They test the donor blood to be sure it is as safe as possible. Then, they split the unit of blood up into components such as platelets, plasma, and cells to be sure they can stretch one unit of blood as far as it can go. After that, they ship the blood to hospitals where it is needed. So, it is more like a blood "pipeline" than a blood bank. Most donor centers are not in hospitals anymore, although many hospitals used to draw blood. So, many times you will still hear a "transfusion service" called a blood bank.. Also, we call the donor drawing facility the "blood bank," while it is really a collection and testing facility.

Paternity testing has long been an area related to blood banking, since blood types of newborns are determined by genes donated from father and mother. Techniques now used for determining possible paternity are much more sophisticated than simple blood typing. If you have seen Montel Williams open the envelope and quote the likelihood of paternity, he is reading a laboratory report generated from DNA testing, which is commonly used today.