A Markov decision process model of allocating emergency medical resource among multi-priority injuries

Yan Ni, Ke Wang, Lindu Zhao
2017 International Journal of Mathematics in Operational Research (IJMOR)  
This article studies how to allocate a scare emergency medical resource at the beginning of large-scale disaster. One salient problem in emergency rescue is how to coordinate the resource among injuries of different degrees in different periods. The injuries are classified into three levels and given different priorities. Waiting cost with resources shortage, deteriorated cost with delay and transferring cost to other hospitals are introduced into the decision-making process. Basing on
more » ... ting the costs into revenue function, a Markov decision process (MDP) model is proposed to establish the optimal action policies in different periods. A dynamic algorithm is proposed to derive the optimal solution. With a numerical experiment, the improvement of MDP is displayed and some managerial suggestions are also provided. Keywords: emergency management; medical resource allocation; Markov decision process; multi-priority injuries; operational research. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ni, Y., Wang, K. and Zhao, L. (2017) 'A Markov decision process model of allocating emergency medical resource among multi-priority injuries', Int. . He received his PhD in Systems Engineering in Southeast University, China. His current teaching and research interests include supply chain and logistics management, complex systems analysis and decision-making, information fusion theory and methods, and emergency Y. Ni et al.
doi:10.1504/ijmor.2017.080738 fatcat:wnmromxjnvc5bg3f47c5jatoya