The Use of Discrete Event Simulation for Optimal Performance of Blood Banks (A Case Study of Al-Shifa Central Blood Bank)

Abstract

Blood banks are a substantial agent of any health service system. Blood is a vital, however limited resource in several treatments and surgeries. Unfortunately, people worldwide still die due to shortage in supply of requested blood products. In the same breath, expired (outdated) blood units is a medical waste such that its disposal is quite expensive to the healthcare industry, as well as environmentally unfriendly. Therefore, this research is inspired by the previous factors, and aimed at the satisfaction of blood demand whilst alleviating the outdating phenomenon of blood units. This deign has approached the discrete event simulation to model the inventory system of Al-Shifa Central Blood Bank (CBB) in Gaza city as a case study. O+packed RBC and whole blood are the most problematic and challenging blood components among the other ones and therefore, this study is limited to them. The ultimate research objective is to identify the optimal daily inventory levels that minimize the outdating and shortage of blood units and their associated costs. Upon verifying and validating the underlying inventory model, it was obtained that the optimal target inventory level that minimizes and balances the outdating and shortage is 74.605 of packed RBC and whole blood units of the O+ blood type.

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