Manufacturing and Service Operations Management | July 2023
Academic / Practical Relevance: We present an innovative approach for timely collection of information on transportation demand (samples and results) using low-cost technology based on feature phones and integrate it with a novel version of the Dynamic Multi-Period Vehicle Routing Problem to generate daily routes in response to this updated information.
Methodology: We design the Optimized Sample Transportation (OST) system which comprises two components: a novel data sharing platform to monitor incoming sample volumes at healthcare facilities, and a comprehensive optimization model that generates daily transportation schedules in response to current demand at each facility. We implement OST in collaboration with Riders For Health, who operate the national ST system in Malawi.
Results: Based on analysis of over 20,000 samples and results transported during July-October 2019, we show that the implementation of OST routes reduced average ST delays by approximately 25%. In addition, the proportion of unnecessary trips by ST couriers decreased by 55%.
Managerial Implications: Results from our implementation demonstrate the practical feasibility of our novel approach for improving centralized ST operations in Malawi and its broader applicability to other resource-limited settings, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
History: This paper has been accepted as part of the 2021 Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Practice-Based Research Competition.
Funding: This work was supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [Grant OPP1182217] and by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health [Grant U54EB027049]. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding organizations.
Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.1182.
Sarang Deo is a Professor of Operations Management at the Indian School of Business (ISB), where he also serves as the Deputy Dean for Faculty and Research and as the Executive Director of the Max Institute of Healthcare Management (MIHM).
His primary area of research is health care delivery systems. He is interested in investigating the impact of operations decisions on population-level health outcomes. Some of the healthcare contexts that he has studied include the influenza vaccine supply chain and the phenomenon of ambulance diversion in the US, HIV early infant diagnosis networks in sub-Saharan Africa, and formal and informal pathways for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis in India. He regularly collaborates with international public health funding and implementation agencies such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and PATH for his research. He currently serves as a member of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on TB (STAG-TB).
Prior to joining ISB, Professor Deo was an Assistant Professor at the Kellogg School of Management. He holds a PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management, an MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, and a B Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. Before entering academia, he worked with Accenture as a management consultant.
