Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Optimising Blood Donation Session Scheduling in South East England

Jeffries, Thomas (2015) Optimising Blood Donation Session Scheduling in South East England. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent,. (KAR id:54468)

PDF
Language: English
Download this file
(PDF/1MB)
[thumbnail of 98thesis_FINAL_1.pdf]
Preview

Abstract

It is essential that all countries operate a form of blood banking service, where blood is collected at donation sessions, stored and then distributed to local healthcare providers. It is imperative that these services are efficiently managed to ensure a safe supply of blood and that costs and wastages are kept minimal. Previous works in the area of blood management have focussed primarily on the perishable inventory problem and on routing blood deliveries to hospitals; there has been relatively little work focusing on scheduling blood donation sessions.

The primary aim of this research is to provide a tool that allows the National Blood Service (the English and Welsh blood service) to schedule donation sessions so that collection targets are met in such a way that costs are minimised (the Blood Scheduling Problem). As secondary aims, the research identifies the key types of data that blood services should be collecting for this type of problem. Finally, various what-if scenarios are considered, specifically improv- ing donor attendance through paying donors and the proposed changes to the inter-donation times for male and female donors.

The Blood Scheduling Problem is formulated as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem and solved using a variable bound heuristic. Data from the South East of England is used to create a collection schedule, with all further analysis also being carried out on this data set. It was possible to make improvements to the number of units under collected in the current schedule, moreover the number of venues and panels operated could be reduced. Further- more, it was found that paying donors to donate was uneconomical. Finally, changing the inter-donation times could lead to a reduction in the number of shortfalls, even when demand was increased by as much as 20%.

Though the model is specific to England and Wales, it can easily be adapted to other countries’ blood services. It is hoped that this model will provide blood services with a model to help them better schedule donation sessions and allow them to identify the data necessary to better understand their performance.

Item Type: Thesis (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD))
Thesis advisor: O'Hanley, Jesse
Thesis advisor: Scaparra, Maria Paola
Uncontrolled keywords: Blood donation scheduling; Optimisation; Healthcare
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HA Statistics > HA33 Management Science
H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD29 Operational Research - Applications
H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD61 Risk Management
Divisions: Divisions > Kent Business School - Division > Kent Business School (do not use)
Depositing User: Users 1 not found.
Date Deposited: 09 Mar 2016 14:00 UTC
Last Modified: 23 Dec 2022 07:07 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/54468 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Jeffries, Thomas.

Creator's ORCID:
CReDIT Contributor Roles:
  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.