Facility location of organ procurement organisations in Indian health care supply chain management

Abstract

In health care supply chain management, particularly in the area of organ transplantation, organ procurement and the transplantation network play an important role. The organ procurement organisation (OPO) should coordinate so that organs are prepared and transported to the recipients when donors become available. The scarcity of organ supply leads to life-challenging issues for the organ recipient. In this research, the importance of the location of OPOs to coordinate with the transplant centres in India is considered, and a solution is provided by facilitating the identification of locations where organs can be procured and distributed to the nearest transplant location. The location of the distribution centres of organs are identified, based on the p-median model. This model minimises the weighted distance of the organ recipients. Initially, the demand or the population density of organ recipients with respect to particular location is recognised. Then, based on the p-median model, the location of OPOs is effectively identified. Experimental analysis proves that the proposed model performs well in facilitating the location of OPOs. The robustness of the proposed work is validated using a sensitivity analysis of the differences in the selection of OPOs when the estimated demand for organs varies.

Keywords

• organs
• organ procurement
• health care supply chain management