Dynamic transportation of patients in hospitals

  • This paper analyzes and solves a patient transportation problem arising in several large hospitals. The aim is to provide an efficient and timely transport service to patients between several locations on a hospital campus. Transportation requests arrive in a dynamic fashion and the solution methodology must therefore be capable of quickly inserting new requests in the current vehicle routes. Contrary to standard dial-a-ride problems, the problem under study contains several complicating constraints which are specific to a hospital context. The paper provides a detailed description of the problem and proposes a two-phase heuristic procedure capable of handling its many features. In the first phase a simple insertion scheme is used to generate a feasible solution, which is improved in the second phase with a tabu search algorithm. The heuristic procedure was extensively tested on real data provided by a German hospital. Results show that the algorithm is capable of handling the dynamic aspect of the problem and of providing high quality solutions. In particular, it succeeded in reducing waiting times for patients while using fewer vehicles.

Download full text files

Export metadata

Additional Services

Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:A. Beaudry, G. Laporte, T. Melo, S. Nickel
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:386-kluedo-15242
Series (Serial Number):Berichte des Fraunhofer-Instituts für Techno- und Wirtschaftsmathematik (ITWM Report) (104)
Document Type:Report
Language of publication:English
Year of Completion:2006
Year of first Publication:2006
Publishing Institution:Fraunhofer-Institut für Techno- und Wirtschaftsmathematik
Creating Corporation:Fraunhofer ITWM
Date of the Publication (Server):2008/05/28
Tag:dial-a-ride; dynamic mode; in-house hospital transportation; tabu search
Faculties / Organisational entities:Fraunhofer (ITWM)
DDC-Cassification:5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 510 Mathematik
Licence (German):Standard gemäß KLUEDO-Leitlinien vor dem 27.05.2011