A model for the optimal design of the Hospital Drug Distribution Chain

Author

Costantino, Nicola ; Dotoli, Mariagrazia ; Falagario, Marco ; Fanti, Maria Pia ; Mangini, Agostino Marcello ; Sciancalepore, Fabio ; Ukovich, Walter

Author_Institution

Dipt. di Ing. Meccanica e Gestionale, Politec. di Bari, Bari, Italy

fYear

2010

fDate

18-20 Feb. 2010

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

The paper addresses the optimal design of the last branch of the pharmaceutical supply chain, i.e., the hospital drug distribution chain (HDDC), starting from suppliers till the patients of a department. Considering a distributed healthcare system composed of different stages connected by medicine and information links labeled with suitable performance indices, a procedure employing digraph modeling and mixed integer linear programming is presented to select the (sub)optimal HDDC configuration. The optimization model is applied under structural constraints to a case study describing an Italian healthcare regional distribution chain. The problem solution provides different HDDC structures allowing the improvement of the healthcare supply chain flexibility and performance.

Keywords

drug delivery systems; integer programming; linear programming; pharmaceutical technology; digraph modeling; distributed healthcare system; hospital drug distribution chain; mixed integer linear programming; optimal design; pharmaceutical supply chain; Constraint optimization; Costs; Drugs; Hospitals; Logistics; Medical services; Mixed integer linear programming; Pharmaceuticals; Supply chain management; Supply chains; hospital drug distribution system; mixed integer linear programming; optimization; performance; supply chain;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Health Care Management (WHCM), 2010 IEEE Workshop on

Conference_Location

Venice

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4997-2

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-4998-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WHCM.2010.5441281

Filename

5441281