Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

Issues of logistics, which focuses on the organization, movement and storage of goods and people, are central to the healthcare sector. Ensuring efficient management of logistics activities requires that continuous efforts are deployed to take into account the challenging environment in which healthcare organizations operate.

In the healthcare sector, many interconnected activities and actors are involved in patient flow, each actor having a specific role and precise objectives with respect to quality, cost, and efficiency. In addition, healthcare organizations operate in an environment characterized by a high degree of dynamism and stochasticity. This significantly complicates the planning of activities. To support decision-making in such a complex context, healthcare logisticians need decision support tools and analytical methods capable of dealing with the specific characteristics that stem from real-life settings.

This research program aims to provide modelling framework and efficient solution approaches to transportation and logistics problems in the healthcare sector. Building models and solution approaches that properly address the complex environment in which healthcare organizations operate, including uncertainties, will provide a more realistic representation of their logistics, and offer a better understanding of approaches to address decision-making under uncertainty.

This research program focuses on three main issues: locating resources for emergency medical services, planning patient transportation, and managing the logistics of collaborative emergency responses. The goal is to find better solutions to these three logistical issues in order to reduce operating costs and improve the quality of healthcare services. To show their importance, we estimate that over 680,000 ambulance transportations are performed annually in the Province of Quebec, and approximately 350,000 intrahospital transportations occur annually in a 677-bed hospital.

From a theoretical and methodological standpoint, this program relies on operations research techniques to model and solve transportation and logistics problems, and in particular, approaches for optimization under uncertainty. Models and solutions stemming from this research program will be beneficial to researchers, practitioners and policy makers in the areas of healthcare and logistics. Throughout the project cycle, special attention will be given to producing findings that can be used in practice and have tangible applications, thus maximizing the impact of the research program in a holistic perspective. Rising to the challenge of an aging population and a systemic increase of healthcare costs, healthcare logistics can provide new approaches and solutions to offer better services and improve patient experience without compromising the financial and social stability of the healthcare system.