The recent pandemic triggered by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus boosted the demand for medical services and protective equipment, causing the generation rate of infectious medical waste (IMW) to increase rapidly. Designing an efficient and reliable IMW reverse logistics network in this situation can help to control the spread of the virus. Studies on this issue are limited, and minimization of costs and the risks associated with the operations of this network consisting of different types of medical waste generation centers (MWGC) are rarely considered. In this research, a linear programming model with three objective functions is developed to minimize the total costs, the risk associated with the transportation and treatment of IMW, and the maximum amount of uncollected waste in MWGCs. Also, multiple functions that calculate the amount of generated waste according to the parameters of the current epidemic outbreak are proposed. Revised Multi-Choice Goal Programming method is employed to solve the multi-objective model, and a real case study from Iran is examined to illustrate the validation of the proposed model. The final results show that the model can create a balance between three considered objectives by determining the flow between centers, deciding to install two new temporary treatment centers, and allowing the network to only have uncollected waste in the first two periods in some MWGCs. Also, managerial insights for health organization authorities extracted from the final results and sensitivity analyses are presented for adequately handling the IMW network.
Medical tourism had notable growth in the past few years, and it is understood that one of the most prevalent types of medical tourism is dental tourism. This study aims to select the most suitable city for investment in dental tourism. Five dimensions and nineteen criteria associated with dental tourism have been specified, and the DEMATEL-based ANP (DANP) is used to determine the interrelation of criteria and compute their weights. Then, the VIKOR is used to evaluate the suitability of different cities for investment in dental tourism and determine the potential areas of the selected cities that need enhancement. A case study is conducted to present the applicability of the suggested model. The results indicate that the dental facilities and service is the most critical dimension, and reputation of hospital/facility and doctors, dental clinics with certification/accreditation scheme are the most important criteria for analysing the suitability of potential locations.
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