Strategic Storage Mode Of Blood For Unconventional Emergency

The number of deaths and injuries caused by unconventional emergencies has increased over recent years. In China, Wenchan earthquake in 2008 resulted in destruction of infrastructure and tragic deaths. In emergency healthcare treatment, transfusion is essential. While attributes of unconventional emergencies like unpredictability and destructibility make it challenging for the authority to provide quick response and efficient response plan for aiding affected areas. It is required for blood emergency support system to transfer adequate blood to demand point in a timely manner. Therefore, setting up national strategic blood reserve system and seeking an appropriate mode are the key issues in blood support system construction.Current literatures on blood strategic reserve mode focus mainly on discussion of different modes and suggestions. Researches on solving key problems in strategic and tactic levels are still scarce. Therefore, it is important to systematically investigate strategic blood reserve modes and potential problems in construction procedure. In this thesis, an appropriate reserve mode was proposed, and inventory renewal mechanism and facility location problem in the system were studied. The author hopes the study results would aid in improving blood emergency support system and setting up national strategic blood reserve system.First, attributes in emergency blood support and challenges the support system would face were analyzed in terms of blood demand, blood collection, blood supply and transfusion safety. Pros and cons were investigated with respect to four strategic blood reserve modes which are profound hypothermia red blood cell reserve network, virtue blood reserves, higher inventory level for current blood station system and blood reserve unit network. A reserve mode was formulated, in which blood reserve unit network virtue blood reserves and profound hypothermia scarce type blood cell reserve network are employed. Besides, operational mechanism and key problems under such mode were proposed.Second, inventory renewal mechanism was studied. An improved (S,s,R) procurement policy was proposed considering fixed lifetime, random lead time, random demand and inventory remaining shelf life. Discrete event simulation approach was employed to evaluate performance of (S,s,R) policy and (R,s,nQ) policy by testing groups of input parameters. The results identified better cost performance of (S,s,R) policy in single blood type inventory system, better cost performance of (R,s,nQ) policy in multi-blood type inventory system and how different input parameters affect simulation results. Third, the location problem in blood reserve unit network design was studied. Each blood reserve unit was assumed to operate under inventory renewal mechenism and response to any unconventional emergency in timely and reliable manners. Taking into account the blood transfer time limit for post-unconventional emergency relief response, demand for multiple blood products and multiple relief phases, a two-objective model was proposed considering multiple scenarios, item types and phases. A heuristic based on tabu search was developed, and computational study showed the effectiveness of the model and algorithm.