Title: Healthcare waste management: a state-of-the-art literature review

Authors: Ankur Chauhan; Amol Singh

Addresses: Department of Operations Management, Indian Institute of Management Rohtak, MD University Campus, 124001 Rohtak, Haryana, India ' Department of Operations Management, Indian Institute of Management Rohtak, MD University Campus, 124001 Rohtak, Haryana, India

Abstract: Enormous amount of waste generation is a critical issue across the world. This issue becomes more vital when various types of hazardous waste gets mixed up with general waste. One such hazardous waste is healthcare waste; this waste is generated in hospitals during different healthcare activities such as pathological diagnostic, surgery, etc. Therefore, to take an account on the issue of healthcare waste management the review of literature has been carried out on the basis of the classification given in Figure 1. This review article provides numerous future research directions including the requirement of more in-depth application of operations management tools and techniques. Additionally, the un-addressed issues related to a healthcare waste management i.e., inventory management, warehousing, bins allocation, routing and transportation, also needs attention for an effective management of healthcare waste.

Keywords: healthcare waste management; HCWM; practices; policies; literature review; waste disposal; optimisation; reverse logistics; recycling; medical waste; hospitals; operations management; inventory management; warehousing; bin allocation; routing; transport.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEWM.2016.080400

International Journal of Environment and Waste Management, 2016 Vol.18 No.2, pp.120 - 144

Received: 31 Dec 2015
Accepted: 02 Jul 2016
Published online: 21 Nov 2016 *

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