A Model for Supply-Chain Decisions for Resource Sharing with an Application to Ventilator Allocation to Combat COVID-19

Sanjay Mehrotra; Hamed Rahimian; Masoud Barah; Fengqiao Luo; Karolina Schantz

A method for optimizing stockpiles of mechanical ventilators, which are critical for treating hospitalized influenza patients in respiratory failure, is introduced in [19] . In a case-study, mild, moderate, and severe pandemic conditions are considered for the state of Texas. Optimal allocations prioritize local over central storage, even though the latter can be deployed adaptively, on the basis of real-time needs. Similar to this paper, the model in [19] uses an expected shortfall of ventilators in the objective function, while also considering a second criteria of total cost of ventilator stockpiling. However, the model in [19] does not consider distribution of ventilators over time. In the case of COVID-19, the ventilator demand is expected to peak at different times in different states, as the demand for each state has different trajectories. Only forecasts are available on how the demand might evolve in the future.