A Cooperative Vehicle Routing Platform for Logistic Management in Healthcare

Abstract

In order to reduce the cost of healthcare processes, optimization systems are used to optimize logistics in healthcare. Algorithms for solving the so-called Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) are more and more applied in healthcare systems requiring the movement of nursery/medical staff or patients. In this paper, we introduce a novel software platform that uses a cooperative vehicle routing algorithm and is able to reduce transportation costs in healthcare applications requiring the movement of nursery/medical staff. The COOP_VR platform adapts an already existing VRP algorithm to the healthcare context and allows the cooperation between two independent healthcare organizations (shippers) that manage their own vehicle fleets in a given geographic area. Preliminary simulation results show the possibility to reduce costs for both healthcare organizations in a range between 1% and 21% of the initial transportation costs.