<P> Robertson published his findings in the British Medical Journal in 1916 and, with the help of a few like minded individuals (including the eminent physician Edward William Archibald who introduced the citrate anticoagulant method), was able to persuade the British authorities of the merits of blood transfusion . Robertson went on to establish the first blood transfusion apparatus at a Casualty Clearing Station on the Western Front in the spring of 1917 . </P> <P> Oswald Hope Robertson, a medical researcher and U.S. Army officer was attached to the RAMC in 1917, where he was instrumental in establishing the first blood banks, in preparation for the anticipated Third Battle of Ypres . He used sodium citrate as the anticoagulant and the blood was extracted from punctures in the vein and was stored in bottles at British and American Casualty Clearing Stations along the Front . He also experimented with preserving separated red blood cells in iced bottles . Geoffrey Keynes, a British surgeon, developed a portable machine that could store blood to enable transfusions to be carried out more easily . </P> <P> The world's first blood donor service was established in 1921 by the secretary of the British Red Cross, Percy Oliver . Volunteers were subjected to a series of physical tests to establish their blood group . The London Blood Transfusion Service was free of charge and expanded rapidly . By 1925, it was providing services for almost 500 patients and it was incorporated into the structure of the British Red Cross in 1926 . Similar systems were established in other cities including Sheffield, Manchester and Norwich, and the service's work began to attract international attention . Similar services were established in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Australia and Japan . </P> <P> Vladimir Shamov and Sergei Yudin in the USSR pioneered the transfusion of cadaveric blood from recently deceased donors . Yudin performed such a transfusion successfully for the first time on March 23, 1930 and reported his first seven clinical transfusions with cadaveric blood at the Fourth Congress of Ukrainian Surgeons at Kharkiv in September . Also in 1930, Yudin organized the world's first blood bank at the Nikolay Sklifosovsky Institute, which set an example for the establishment of further blood banks in different regions of the Soviet Union and in other countries . By the mid-1930s the Soviet Union had set up a system of at least 65 large blood centers and more than 500 subsidiary ones, all storing "canned" blood and shipping it to all corners of the country . </P>

Who started the system of blood bank and plasma bank