Platelet researcher Dr. Elisabeth Maurer-Spurej developed a new online educational tool about platelets. Dr. Maurer-Spurej is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Pathology and affiliated with the UBC Centre for Blood Research and the Canadian Blood Services Center for Innovation.

The website was inspired by the realization that very few people have ever been exposed to a holistic view of platelet physiology and function. Dr. Maurer-Spurej developed plateletMAP to bridge this knowledge gap.

Information about platelets is usually organized in chapters or by discipline. However, platelets don't care about different branches of medicine like hematology, oncology, immunology, gastroenterology, neurology etc. Platelets connect everything. The purpose of plateletMAP is to show the connections and to help users understand the connections. plateletMAP is an interactive educational tool about platelets where users can start with the body, jump to body parts to learn about platelet interactions/functions specific to these body parts. Users can hover over words to get more information. Users can also go to the map for a holistic view and see how everything is connected. A series of blogs will discuss topics of interest in more detail. Users can comment, provide feedback and suggestions and contribute.