A multiple-drawer medication layout problem in automated dispensing cabinets

Jennifer Pazour () and Russell Meller ()

Health Care Management Science, 2012, vol. 15, issue 4, 339-354

Abstract: In this paper we investigate the problem of locating medications in automated dispensing cabinets (ADCs) to minimize human selection errors. We formulate the multiple-drawer medication layout problem and show that the problem can be formulated as a quadratic assignment problem. As a way to evaluate various medication layouts, we develop a similarity rating for medication pairs. To solve industry-sized problem instances, we develop a heuristic approach. We use hospital ADC transaction data to conduct a computational experiment to test the performance of our developed heuristics, to demonstrate how our approach can aid in ADC design trade-offs, and to illustrate the potential improvements that can be made when applying an analytical process to the multiple-drawer medication layout problem. Finally, we present conclusions and future research directions. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Keywords: Pharmaceutical; Quadratic assignment problem; Patient safety; ADCs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10729-012-9197-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:hcarem:v:15:y:2012:i:4:p:339-354

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10729

DOI: 10.1007/s10729-012-9197-8

Access Statistics for this article

Health Care Management Science is currently edited by Yasar Ozcan

More articles in Health Care Management Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().