A location-routing problem within blood sample collection chains

We focus on improving a two-echelon blood sample collection chain with an application for MEUHEDET, the second largest health maintenance organization (HMO) in Israel. The effectiveness of the chain is influenced by two contradictory factors: (a) how many clinics should be activated to satisfy all customers' demand and (b) how many vehicles should be employed to deliver the collected samples to the testing lab in time and in a cost-effective manner. Determining the optimal balance between these two aspects while satisfying timing and quality constraints constitute the main focus of our work. To find a solution, a novel approach based on a combination of the vehicle routing heuristic with the fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS) is developed.