Reshaping National Organ Allocation Policy

Abstract

Working with U.S. policymakers to redesign national organ allocation The Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network (OPTN), which manages transplantation activities in the United States, recently partnered with the MIT Operations Research Center to design and implement novel organ allocation policies that are more equitable, efficient, and inclusive. National organ allocation policies need to strike a delicate balance between efficiency and fairness in multiple objectives, reconciling often disparate value judgments and priorities from many different stakeholders. In “Reshaping National Organ Allocation Policy,” T. Papalexopoulos, J. Alcorn, and D. Bertsimas et al. introduced a novel optimization- and machine learning-based framework to aid policy design and navigate challenging fairness-efficiency tradeoffs. The authors collaborated with the OPTN to apply the framework to the design of a new national allocation policy for lungs, which was implemented in March 2023 and is anticipated to reduce waitlist mortality by approximately 20%. Based on this success, the authors are now working toward the redesign of the entire U.S. organ allocation system, including kidneys, pancreata, hearts, and livers.