A decision support system for patient scheduling in travel vaccine administration

The administration of travel vaccines presents a number of operations management challenges. The interplay between shared consumption of multi-dose vaccine packages, rapid spoilage upon opening, the high cost of wastage, and the unique vaccination needs of the patients makes for a very interesting and complex scheduling problem that could benefit from computerized decision support. We compare the performance of a novel binary integer programming model and a genetic algorithm solution technique with conventional scheduling approaches. Computational results show that significant cost savings can be achieved with the DSS while simultaneously considering scheduling preferences of patients and mitigating scheduling inconvenience.

► Multi-dose vaccine vials are cheaper per dose than single-dose, but spoil rapidly.
► Simulated travelers needing vaccination at a travel clinic over a 30 day period.
► Created DSS for patient scheduling with integer programming and genetic algorithm.
► Considered scheduling preferences of patients and shelf-life-once-opened of drugs.
► Results show significant cost savings can be achieved with the DSS.