Inventory management of medicines required to be carried out in ambulances

This study aims to classify medicines using multi-criteria decision making methods in order to improve the stock management of mandatory medicines in 112 Emergency Aid Ambulances under the General Directorate of Emergency Health Services. Since time is very valuable in emergency health services, it is very important to manage stocks well. Nowadays, centralized purchasing model is applied and this method sometimes lacks flexibility, making problems such as excess stock, wastage and critical drug shortages possible. In this study, the EDAS method was used by considering the frequency of use, remaining shelf life, unit cost and disposal rate criteria. With this method, medicines are categorized into A, B, C classes. At the same time, simulations were created with different criteria weights and the probabilities of class change of drugs were analyzed. The findings show that some drugs remain critical in all cases, while others may change their level of importance depending on the conditions. At the end of the study, separate inventory management policies were developed for stable, volatile and critically volatile drugs, and recommendations were presented for a dynamic and data-driven inventory management system. The results obtained can provide important guidance to decision makers for effective medication management in 112 emergency aid stations.