Solving Blood Platelet Banks Model Using

1 Corresponding

Introduction

A platelet is a disk-shaped structure found in the blood of all mammals, playing a major role in the coagulation of blood 1; platelets are transfused to patients to treat or prevent bleeding during surgery and other medical conditions associated with platelet deficiency or function defect. Platelets shelf life for transfusion purposes is up to six days; however, due to testing, platelets are generally not released to inventory until 24 hours after the collection time. Therefore, usable platelet shelf life is generally five days. This is an extremely short product shelf life compared to other blood products. This makes inventory management of platelets
Minimizing frequencies of shortages. 2. Maximizing the quality of service.
1

Blood Type: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood type, accessed on April 15,2012

T

Table 3: Blood platelet substitution relationship Demand/Donors AB+ AB– A+ A– B+ B– O+ O– AB+ 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 AB– 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 A+ 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 A– 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 B+ 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 B– 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 O+ 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 O– 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

3. Minimizing the outdating of blood platelets. 4. Maximizing blood platelet bank rewards. 5. Keeping inventory level to the minimum.

As corresponding measures of how well these operating objectives are attained we used, respectively, the following:

1. Aggregate level of regional inventory in units over time. 2. Average units outdated (wasted) per day. 3. Average shortage per day.

4. Estimated reward associated with a given policy alternative. 5. Confidence interval and standard deviation.

Shortages, while they are known to exist, are very difficult to measure. Most blood region managers try to maintain sufficient blood inventories to balance the frequency of hospital shortages and attendant surgical postponements, on the one hand and outdating on the other hand. Since blood platelet usage in a region is relatively unexpected over time, the standard deviation can be used as a measure of how well a blood region does in maintaining a