26-03-2025: El Mundo spotlights Klijn’s team and its push to boost kidney exchange donations through innovative strategies
Spain, a global leader in organ transplantation, broke new records in 2024 with over 6,400 procedures. Within the kidney exchange program run by the National Transplant Organization (ONT), transplants from living donors are carried out through paired exchanges, which match incompatible donor-recipient pairs with others in similar situations. These matches form cycles or chains, sometimes initiated by altruistic donors.
Flip Klijn, in collaboration with Péter Biró (Hungary), Xenia Klimentova, and Ana Viana (both from Portugal), has explored innovative game-theoretic aspects of kidney exchange programs. Their research focuses on designing algorithms that enhance transplant efficiency by incentivizing patients to register better or multiple potential donors—such as friends or family members—rather than depending on a single donor. This approach aims to substantially improve the chances of finding compatible matches and to reduce waiting times. Their findings, published in Mathematics of Operations Research, demonstrate how certain incentive structures can significantly improve the overall efficiency of the system. The work earned the team the SEIO–BBVA Award for Best Applied Contribution with Social Impact.
The researchers also highlight the model’s scalability at an international level and its broader applicability to other non-monetary exchange systems, such as time banks or Erasmus student exchange programs.
