Title: A blood bank inventory control model for red blood cells

Authors: Erhan Kozan

Addresses: School of Mathematical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, QLD 4001, Australia

Abstract: Meeting the demand of hospitals and pathology laboratories for a complex mix of blood products is very critical in terms of health care and has to be done within resource constraints placed on blood banks. This paper aims to produce a mathematical model to determine the best policy for despatching red cells units to hospitals and laboratories. The model that has been developed finds the optimal despatching policy while minimising the number of outdated units and maintaining safety stocks as well as satisfying no-shortage policies. The problem has been formulated as an integer linear program and solved by using GAMS.

Keywords: blood bank; health care; integer programming; inventory theory; perishable products; red cell products.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2001.001113

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2001 Vol.3 No.2/3/4, pp.203-215

Published online: 30 Jun 2003 *

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