A Maximal Covering Location Model for the Organ Transplant Organization in Turkey

Abstract

Transplantation of the organs is one of the principal treatment techniques for the people who have critical organ issues. One of the main steps of this treatment is getting the organ as quickly as possible to its recipient from a potential donor. To provide the aforementioned treatment, the spatial distributions of the organ transplant centers which maximize the donors/patients coverage become essential. In this chapter, the organ transplant process of Turkey which has 99 transplant centers (hospitals) in 81 cities is considered. The main goal of this study is to maximize the donor/patient coverage within the system constraints. As a potential demand source, 923 districts are determined using geographic information system (GIS). With the application of maximal covering location model, the number of covered donors/patients is maximized considering the cold ischemia time of organs. Optimal results are obtained for different scenarios based on heart, liver, and kidney.