Evaluating the Performance of a Safe Insulin Supply Chain Using the AHP-TOPSIS Approach

Abstract

People with type 1 diabetes require insulin, a lifesaving and essential medication, to maintain their blood sugar levels below dangerous levels. Unfortunately, the insulin industry faces supply and affordability issues, and patients and their families face an enormous burden. As a result of high prices and lack of availability, individuals are turning to other options for purchasing insulin, such as online pharmacies, which may or may not be legitimate. Despite the necessity of safe insulin for diabetics in the legitimate Pharmaceutical Supply Chain (PSC), few researchers have considered implementing strategies to maximize patient safety for purchasing insulin. Therefore, the current research seeks to bridge this gap and provide cohesive information on overcoming this challenge and maximizing insulin safety. This study employs a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) model that combines Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) metrics, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to develop a model that can prioritize and select the best criteria for maximizing insulin safety and achieving the study objective. A comparison of two insulin supply chain scenarios was performed. As a result of this research, adding a traceability technology to the insulin supply chain, specifically blockchain (T42) in scenario 2 provides the best results to the supply chain for maximizing and ensuring the safety of insulin, as compared to scenario 1, where the final score achieved almost 71%. This research provides a useful tool for assessing the safety of other critical goods that customers value in strategic and complex decision-making. Academics, professionals, and decision-makers can benefit from this research using a rigorous scientific decision-support system.

Role of Technology in the Performance Measure of Insulin Cold Chains

“…When it comes to the supply chain for medications such as insulin, ensuring that the cold chain is maintained is critical to preserving the efficacy of the medication. While technologies such as RFID have been around for some time, their use within the PSC has been limited [10]. However, with recent advancements in RFID reader technology and a growing understanding of how this technology can improve supply chains, there is a renewed interest in using RFID to improve insulin's CCM.…”

“…Due to the inefficient supply chain of drugs and external factors like the Covid-19 pandemic, the lack of availability of insulin or other drugs has increased. As Haji et al (2022) noted, the lack of availability of medicines and drugs is an alarming situation that might lead to alternatives or counterfeit drugs [10]. Counterfeit medicinal drugs include those with no or few active ingredients with substituted, adulterated, and hazardous ingredients, entirely misrepresented or sold with a fake brand name.…”

Development of Risk Management Mitigation Plans for the Infant Formula Milk Supply Chain Using an AHP Model

“…In addition, Saaty developed a relative measurement scale for pairwise comparisons, as shown in Table 2, to determine which scale to use. Table 2 shows the measurement scale for the pairwise comparison [51,71]. By resolving the AHP model and ranking the options, we better understood how to mitigate the risks regarding the IFM's quality.…”

Selection of Digital Investment Instruments Applying the Multi-Objective Optimization by Ratio Analysis Method

“…A decision support system is a computer-based system that can be used to assist the decision-making process in solving semi-structured or unstructured problems by utilizing certain data and methods [7][8][9]. Decision support systems have been widely used by previous researchers to help solve decision-making problems [10][11][12][13][14].…”