Friday, 10.50 - 11.35, HFB|A

Blood Supply Chains: Challenges for the Industry and How Operations Research Can Help

Blood is a unique product that cannot be manufactured, but must be donated, and is perishable, with red blood cells lasting 42 days and platelets 5 days. Blood is also life-saving. A multi-billion dollar industry has evolved out of the demand for and supply of blood with the global market for blood products projected to reach $41.9 billion by 2020. The United States constitutes the largest market for blood products in the world, with approximately 21 million blood components transfused every year in the nation and approximately 36,000 units of red blood cells needed every day.

Although blood services are organized differently in many countries, such supply chain network activities as collection, testing, processing, and distribution are common to all. In this talk, I will focus on the United States, but the methodological tools can be adapted to other countries. Specifically, in the US, the blood services industry has been faced with many challenges in the past decade, with a drop in demand for blood products and increased competition. Revenues of blood service organizations have fallen and the financial stress is resulting in loss of jobs in this healthcare sector, fewer funds for innovation,  as well as an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions.

In this presentation, I will overview our research on blood supply chains, from both optimization and game theoretic perspectives. For the former, I will highlight generalized network models for managing the blood banking system, and for the design and redesign for sustainability. In addition, a framework for Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) in the sector and associated synergy measures will be described. A case study under the status quo and in the case of a disaster of a pending M&A in the US will be presented. Finally, a novel game theory model will be highlighted, which captures competition among blood service organizations for donors.

Anna Nagurney is the John F. Smith Memorial Professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, which she founded in 2001. She holds ScB, AB, ScM and PhD degrees from Brown University in Providence, RI. She is the author or editor of 13 books, including the new book, "Competing on Supply Chain Quality: A Network Economics Perspective," with Dong Li, more than 180 refereed journal articles, and over 50 book chapters.She presently serves on the editorial boards of a dozen journals and two book series and is the editor of another book series.

Professor Nagurney has been a Fulbrighter twice (in Austria and Italy), was a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden for the past 4 years, and was a Distinguished Guest Visiting Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. She was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College at Oxford University during the 2016 Trinity Term. Anna has held visiting appointments at MIT (at the Center for Transportation and the Sloan School of Management) and at Brown University and was a Science Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2005-2006. She has been recognized for her research on networks with the Kempe prize from the University of Umea, the Faculty Award for Women from the US National Science Foundation, the University Medal from the University of Catania in Italy, and was elected a Fellow of the RSAI (Regional Science Association International) as well as INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) among other awards. She has also been recognized with several awards for her mentorship of students and her female leadership with the WORMS Award, for example. Her research has garnered support from the AT&T Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation through its Bellagio Center programs, the Institute for International Education, and the National Science Foundation. She has given plenary/keynote talks and tutorials on 5 continents. She is an active member of professional societies, including INFORMS, POMS, and RSAI.