scholarly journals Route Optimization Tool (RoOT) for distribution of vaccines and health products

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Zelda B. Zabinsky ◽  
Mariam Zameer ◽  
Larissa P.G. Petroianu ◽  
Mamiza M. Muteia ◽  
Aida L. Coelho

Delivery of health products from provinces or districts to health facilities, including temperature-sensitive vaccines, is one of the most effective interventions to ensure availability of supplies and save lives in low- and middle-income countries. Currently, routes are hand drawn by logisticians that are adjusted based on vehicle availability and quantity of products. Easy-to-use supply chain tools are needed that planners can use in real-time to create or adjust routes for available vehicles and road conditions. Efficient and optimized distribution is even more critical with the COVID-19 vaccine distribution. We develop a Route Optimization Tool (RoOT) using a variant of a Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Algorithm (VeRSA) that is coded in Python, but reads and writes Excel files to make data input and using outputs easier. The tool takes into account cold chain distribution, is easy-to-use, and provides routes quickly within two minutes. RoOT can be used for routine operations or in emergency situations, such as delivery of new COVID-19 vaccine. The tool has a user-centric design with easy dropdown menus and the ability to optimize on time, risk, or combination of both. Training of logisticians in Mozambique indicate that RoOT is easy to use and provides a tool to improve planning and efficient distribution of health products, especially vaccines. We illustrate using RoOT in an emergency situation, such as a cyclone. RoOT is an open-source tool for optimal routing of health products. It provides optimized routes faster than most commercial software, and is tailored to meet the needs of government stakeholders. Currently, RoOT does not allow multi-day routes, and is designed for trips that can be completed within twenty-four hours. Areas for future development include multi-day routing and integration with mapping software to facilitate distance calculations and visualization of routes.

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Zelda B. Zabinsky ◽  
Mariam Zameer ◽  
Larissa P.G. Petroianu ◽  
Mamiza M. Muteia ◽  
Aida L. Coelho

Ensuring the delivery and availability of health products, including temperature-sensitive vaccines, is vital to saving lives in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).  In many LMICs routes are hand drawn by logisticians and are adjusted based on vehicle availability and product quantities. Easy-to-use real-time supply chain tools are needed to create or adjust routes for available vehicles and road conditions. Having more efficient and optimized distribution is especially critical for COVID-19 vaccine distribution. Route Optimization Tool (RoOT) works best for planning routes for 50 health facilities or less, in two minutes. We develop RoOT using a variant of a Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Algorithm (VeRSA) that is coded in Python but reads and writes Excel files to make data input and using outputs easier. RoOT can be used for routine operations or in emergency situations, such as delivery of new COVID-19 vaccine. The tool has a user-centric design with easy dropdown menus and the ability to optimize on time, risk, or combination of both. RoOT is an open-source tool for optimal routing of health products. It provides optimized routes faster than most commercial software and is tailored to meet the needs of government stakeholders We trained supply chain logisticians in Mozambique on using RoOT, and their feedback validates that RoOT is a practical tool to improve planning and efficient distribution of health products, especially vaccines. We also illustrate how  RoOT can be adapted for an emergency situation by using a test scenario of a cyclone. Currently, RoOT does not allow multi-day routes, and is designed for trips that can be completed within twenty-four hours. Areas for future development include multi-day routing and integration with mapping software to facilitate distance calculations and visualization of routes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 141-146
Author(s):  
Pedro Martins de Oliveira ◽  
Adriano Souza Leão ◽  
Regina Maria Cunha Leite ◽  
Alfredo Ruben Corniali ◽  
Marcos Lage Cajazeira Ramos ◽  
...  

This paper aims to present a concept of technology as a solution to monitor thermo-sensitive health products and contribute to preserving their integrity along the cold chain. This study is exploratory research with a case study involving a survey with health professionals and the use of tools for product development in order to find a solution to the problem of traceability and warnings about temperature deviations. From the information collected and the literature reviewed, it was possible to develop a concept of a product to meet the customer requirements. The results showed that thermo-sensitive health products lack traceability in the health network and that the concept presented contributes to solving this problem.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Yile Ba ◽  
Chenxi Feng ◽  
Wenpeng Jia ◽  
Xin Liu ◽  
Jianwei Ren

Cold chain logistics has been playing a more and more crucial role in modern society. As a special professional cold chain logistics, emergency cold chain logistics can provide quality assurance for temperature-sensitive products in emergency situations. Due to the fact that demand is uncertain in emergency situations, the cold chain logistics companies have to deal with the issue of uncertainty. However, there is no literature on the emergency cold chain logistics distribution optimization problem with uncertain demand. This research contributes to solving this problem. To deal with uncertain demand in emergency situations, an emergency cold chain logistics distribution optimization model with time windows is proposed based on scenario analysis. The objectives of the model are to minimize the total cost and shorten the delivery time simultaneously. The model can also optimize product procurement and refrigerated vehicle renting. The multi-scenario optimization model is applied to a Chinese cold chain logistics center to verify its effectiveness.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akmal Rustamov

The paper addresses the problem of increasing transportation safety due to usage of new possibilities provided by modern technologies. The proposed approach extends such systems as ERA-GLONASS and eCall via service network composition enabling not only transmitting additional information but also information fusion for defining required emergency means as well as planning for a whole emergency response operation. The main idea of the approach is to model the cyber physical human system components by sets of services representing them. The services are provided with the capability of self- contextualization to autonomously adapt their behaviors to the context of the car-driver system. The approach is illustrated via an accident emergency situation response scenario. “ERA-GLONASS” is the Russian state emergency response system for accidents, aimed at improving road safety and reducing the death rate from accidents by reducing the time for warning emergency services. In fact, this is a partially copied European e Call system with some differences in the data being transmitted and partly backward compatible with the European parent. The principle of the system is quite simple and logical: in the event of an accident, the module built into the car in fully automatic mode and without human intervention determines the severity of the accident, determines the vehicle’s location via GLONASS or GPS, establishes connection with the system infrastructure and in accordance with the protocol, transfers the necessary data on the accident (a certain distress signal). Having received the distress signal, the employee of the call center of the system operator should call the on-board device and find out what happened. If no one answers, send the received data to Sistema-112 and send it to the exact coordinates of the team of rescuers and doctors, and the last one to arrive at the place is given 20 minutes. And all this, I repeat, without the participation of a person: even if people caught in an accident will not be able to independently call emergency services, the data on the accident will still be transferred. In this work intended to add some information about applying system project in Uzbek Roads especially mountain regions like “Kamchik” pass. The Kamchik Pass is a high mountain pass at an elevation of 2.306 m above the sea level, located in the Qurama Mountains in eastern Uzbekistan and its length is about 88km.The road to reach the pass is asphalted, but there are rough sections where the asphalt has disappeared. It’s called A373. The old road over the pass was by passed by a tunnel built in 1999. On the horizon, the snow-capped peaks of the Fan Mountains come into view. The pass is located in the Fergana Valley between the Tashkent and Namangan Regions.


Author(s):  
Francis Barchi ◽  
Millan A. AbiNader ◽  
Samantha C. Winter ◽  
Lena M. Obara ◽  
Daniel Mbogo ◽  
...  

Despite the well-documented health benefits of recreational sports, few opportunities exist in lower- and middle-income countries for adult women to participate in recreational physical activities. An explanatory sequential mixed methods approach was used to explore associations between an innovative soccer program for adult women and self-reported health status. Cross-sectional survey data were collected in 2018–2019 from 702 women in the Nikumbuke Project, a health and literacy program in southeastern rural Kenya, followed by focus group discussions with 225 women who also participated in the Project’s soccer program. Quantitative findings suggest that women who participated in soccer had 67% greater odds of reporting good or excellent health than their non-soccer playing peers. Thematic analysis of qualitative data indicated that women credited soccer with less pain, fatigue, and stress, as well as weight loss and reduced dependence on medicine for hypertension, pain, and sleep problems. Women equated health benefits with greater ease and efficiency in completing chores, reduced worries, youthful energy, male-like strength, and pleased husbands. Soccer programs for adult women may be particularly effective interventions in settings where access to health care is limited and where lack of opportunity to engage in physical aerobic activity increases women’s risks for poor health outcomes.


Author(s):  
Risald Risald ◽  
Suyoto Suyoto ◽  
Albertus Joko Santoso

<p>Deaf or hearing loss is a condition of inability to hear something, either totally or partially. Hearing loss greatly affects the life of a person in communicating with the people around him. Deaf people will be very difficult when in a medical emergency, this is because the medical emergency situation requires fast action.</p><p>          The Healthy Phone application is a mobile medical emergency call application that can help people with hearing impaired when in emergency situations. With the Healthy Phone application, the user only needs to select an icon that suits the situation encountered in touchscreen mobile device then the message will be sent to the nearest hospital.</p>                To search for icons corresponding to emergencies, the User Centered Design (UCD) method is used. This application is very helpful for deaf people because this application does not require audio communication and user location is also sent automatically to the nearest hospital. The results were analyzed using four emergency event scenarios with a total score of 87% and an average user time of less than 0:42 sec indicating that the study was successful in designing a mobile medical emergency call application according to user requirements.


Vaccine ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (7) ◽  
pp. 899-904 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra D. Kristensen ◽  
Tina Lorenson ◽  
Kate Bartholomew ◽  
Shirley Villadiego

2018 ◽  
Vol 226 ◽  
pp. 04008
Author(s):  
Vladimir M. Zababurin ◽  
Marina A. Egorova ◽  
Yuliya A. Polyakova

The main disadvantages of the existing methods of managing the current state of technical systems are revealed. A non-standard approach is proposed for managing the functionality of the system in emergency situations. The character of the dynamics of the recovery processes of the technical system is determined as its state approaches the emergency one on the basis of the recommendations of the theory of self-organized criticality (SOC). The physical criteria for assessing the current state of the technical system are revealed. The rationale for using the physical indicator of the functional destabilization of the system is given. The signs of the pre-emergency state of the technical system are considered. A grapho-analytical model for the development of an emergency situation has been developed. The fact of the inevitable increase in the entropy of the system upon its transition to an emergency state is established. Structuring of the system development process in an emergency situation is carried out in three stages. The methodology for estimating the pre-emergency state of complex open systems is presented. The advantages of the proposed approach to managing the state of technical systems in comparison with traditional ones are established.


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