Viable healthcare supply chain network design for a pandemic

Abstract

The recent COVID-19 pandemic revealed that healthcare networks must have a flexible and effective structure. In this study, we develop a viable healthcare network design for a pandemic using a multi-stage stochastic approach. We propose a multi-level network that includes health centers, computed tomography scan centers, hospitals, and clinics. Patients have conditions to returning to normal life or quarantining at home. Three objectives are defined: maximizing the probability of patient recovery, minimizing the costs of all centers in the network, and minimizing the Coronavirus death rate. We investigate a real case study in Iran to demonstrate the model’s applicability. Finally, we compare the healthcare supply chain network design in a pandemic with a normal situation to advise how the network can continue to remain viable.

The IoT-enabled sustainable reverse supply chain for COVID-19 Pandemic Wastes (CPW)

“…As a step towards controlling COVID-19 phenomena, scholars and practitioners started to conduct studies in different fields, especially SCM ( Hosseini et al, 2021 , Alizadeh et al, 2022 ). After the rapid proliferation of CPWs, RSC as one of SCM arms and an important and necessary problem during the pandemic attracted much attention.…”

Designing supply chain strategies against epidemic outbreaks such as COVID‐19: Review and future research directions

“…The third cluster (blue) focuses on pandemics and specifically on the healthcare industry. Many studies have explored different issues in healthcare supply chains during or after a pandemic, such as resilience (Bag et al., 2021; Spiekse et al., 2022), network optimization (Nagurnery, 2021), green supply chain management (Kholaif et al., 2023), resource planning (Fattahi et al., 2023), viability (Alizadeh et al., 2022), and supplier selection (Pamucar et al., 2022).…”

Hospital Supply Chain Management: Cross-Disciplinarity Opportunities in the Post-Pandemic Era and Research Agenda

“…Other studies concentrated on developing models to assess the long-term viability and resilience of HSCM in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak (Azadi et al, 2022;Mazingi et al, 2020;Opfermann et al, 2021;Scala and Lindsay, 2021). About 9% of studies are related to the application of techniques or systems design for decision-making (Alizadeh et al, 2022;Govindan et al, 2020;Grida et al, 2020;Sequeiros et al, 2023;Suri et al, 2022;Zamiela et al, 2022) and finally, 2% of the articles evaluate the role of lean practices in HSCM management (Alemsan et al, 2022). Figure 4 shows the number and percentage of participation according to the focus of each of the studies reviewed.…”