@inproceedings{8f59aa151a2c46a7a1fa9e59c966f967,
title = "A location-routing problem within blood sample collection chains",
abstract = "We focus on improving a two-echelon blood sample collection chain with an application for MEUHEDET, the second largest health maintenance organization (HMO) in Israel. The effectiveness of the chain is influenced by two contradictory factors: (a) how many clinics should be activated to satisfy all customers' demand and (b) how many vehicles should be employed to deliver the collected samples to the testing lab in time and in a cost-effective manner. Determining the optimal balance between these two aspects while satisfying timing and quality constraints constitute the main focus of our work. To find a solution, a novel approach based on a combination of the vehicle routing heuristic with the fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS) is developed.",
keywords = "FPTAS, blood samples collection, healthcare supply chains, optimization.",
author = "Amir Elalouf and Dmitry Tsadikovich and Eugene Levner",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 IEEE.; 5th International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies, CoDIT 2018 ; Conference date: 10-04-2018 Through 13-04-2018",
year = "2018",
month = jun,
day = "22",
doi = "10.1109/CoDIT.2018.8394826",
language = "English",
series = "2018 5th International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies, CoDIT 2018",
publisher = "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers",
pages = "488--491",
booktitle = "2018 5th International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies, CoDIT 2018",
address = "United States",
}