Are mobile blood donation applications green?

On a global scale, software sustainability is attracting more and more attention. The term green software often refers to environmental sustainability applied to software systems, however, it is impacted by the different dimensions of sustainability. Green software can be divided into green by software and green in software. Blood donation mobile applications are more and more used by smartphone users. They represent an alternative way to attract volunteers and increase awareness about the importance of blood donation acts. The aim of this paper is to assess the greenability of seventy-two free blood donation applications using individual, social, environmental and technical dimensions of sustainability. The type, functionality and energy consumption of each app are identified and analyzed. Results have shown that the type of the BD app has a great impact on its level of greenability.