302. Reducing open vial wastage with lateral transshipment in COVID-19 vaccine administration
Contributed abstract in session FB-3: Healthcare Logistics /2, stream Regular talks.
Friday, 11:00-12:30Room: Room S2
Authors (first author is the speaker)
| 1. | Burcu Balcik
|
| Ozyegin University | |
| 2. | Cagri Ozmemis
|
| Industrial Engineering, Özyeğin University |
Abstract
Efficiently managing COVID-19 vaccination programs faces a critical challenge: minimizing vaccine wastage, especially with multi-dose vials at final administration points. Once opened, these vials expire rapidly, leading to significant waste due to uncertain clinic demand. Based on insights from healthcare practitioners, we propose a lateral transshipment strategy to transfer open vials between clinics, aiming to optimize resource utilization. This approach integrates a two-stage stochastic programming model to address demand uncertainty at family health centers. To solve the problem, we propose a practical heuristic approach in which we cluster the vaccination clinics based on their capacity. We present a case study focusing on family health centers in Tuzla, a district of Istanbul, and provide valuable insights. The results show that practicing transshipment can provide significant savings during low vaccination periods, the direction of transshipments usually occurs from small clinics to large clinics, and our heuristic approach is promising in solution quality and time.
Keywords: Vaccine administration, COVID-19, open vial wastage, lateral transshipment
Keywords
- Healthcare logistics
- Modelling and simulation
Status: accepted
Back to the list of papers