Towards an Optimized and Sustainable Blood Supply Chain Network under Uncertainty: A Literature Review

Abstract

Blood Supply Chain (BSC) is a challenging subset of the healthcare industry. It treats the blood flow from donor to patient guaranteeing the patient’s needs. Considering the scarcity of blood products, the shortage and wastage are undesirable. As consequence, postponed surgeries, untreated patients, and even deaths should be avoided. Thus, designing and sustainably optimizing the BSC processes is vital. The paper develops a literature review focusing on translating sustainability into the BSC. It captures insights to develop a framework related to the design of a sustainable BSC under an uncertain environment. Studies from, essentially, the last 10 years are analyzed addressing the following aspects: (1) BSC phases characterization, (2) relevant models published according to the strategic-tactical and the operational-tactical perspectives, and (3) capturing the sustainability dimensions treated in previous studies — that rarely are explored together in literature. The authors filtered the initial sample of papers, achieving 90 studies that were reviewed and deeply explored. During the reviewing process, 3 papers concentrated on the strategic-tactical approach were selected as the most comprehensive on the topic — exploring each sustainable pillar. A similar approach was adopted for the operational-tactical perspective, resulting in the examination of 2 studies. The main contributions are: (1) a comprehensive literature revision connected with sustainability goals; (2) capturing insights to answer different questions — that until now have not yet been answered and (3) identifying challenges related to modeling aspects, risk, uncertainty, complexities, solution methods, and regulatory aspects. These contributions will be fruitful to develop directions to future research, adding sustainability insight directly to BSC.