Hospital Drugs Distribution with Autonomous Robot Vehicles

The hospital sector is implementing several services and procedures in order to improve the quality and assistances through new technologies. In this context, the drugs distribution is a very important activity to provide an efficient service to all departments that need supply. The spread of new viruses, such as COVID19, or other dangers, which requires the decrease of interactions between people even within the hospital sector, can also be limited using a fleet of autonomous robot vehicles. Drugs cross delivery in a hospital is an activity that can be performed through the use of these new vehicles. In this paper an innovative optimization approach of drugs cross distribution within a hospital is proposed, in order to reduce both number and length of trips and number of autonomous robot vehicles in the fleet, without significantly reducing the level of the provided service. The idea is based on the collaborative logistics concept in which a limited number of autonomous robot vehicles are used for time-scheduled delivery activities through a combination of two departments to be served for each delivery. This strategy is formalized by an Integer Linear Programming Problem to optimize the delivery tasks. Moreover, a case study simulation is presented to show the application of the methodology in a hospital.