Electric vehicle routing in dialysis patient transportation services

Today, patient transportation in the health sector has become an issue requiring an effective plan and systematic structure with the increase in the elderly population and the spread of chronic diseases in parallel with it, and the increasing demand for home care services. In the needs and demands of patients according to the types of diseases, in particular, it is important to provide timely transportation services from their homes to health institutions and from health institutions to their homes, which should be regular treatment and during treatment, in terms of operational contributions and service quality. In line with the needs that are developing today, especially with the demand of the elderly population, patient transportation processes can be fulfilled with electric vehicles, which offer important advantages in urban transportation. The study offers route optimization with the proposal of using electric vehicles that offer the possibility of transporting patients from hospital to homes, from homes to hospital at lower costs. Within the scope of this study, the scenario of transporting dialysis patients primarily for patient transportation in the healthcare sector was considered by taking into account patient demands and needs. In the study, it was aimed to plan the route by taking into account the different time window restrictions of the patients in addition to the vehicle capacity and charge-battery restrictions in order to meet the patient demands. For this purpose, the mathematical model presented for the problem has been solved with the CPLEX solver of the GAMS (General Algebraic Modeling System) software for small-sized problems. The results obtained in order to minimize the total distance traveled by electricity were compared with the proposed metaheuristics's results. It was found that the solution time of the problem involving twenty patients with a mathematical model was not reasonable. The results obtained by the Simulated Annealing algorithm have shown that the proposed algorithm for route planning gives good results in a short time.