IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0246110.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Game theory to enhance stock management of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 outbreak

Author

Listed:
  • Khaled Abedrabboh
  • Matthias Pilz
  • Zaid Al-Fagih
  • Othman S Al-Fagih
  • Jean-Christophe Nebel
  • Luluwah Al-Fagih

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many healthcare facilities have suffered from shortages in medical resources, particularly in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). In this paper, we propose a game-theoretic approach to schedule PPE orders among healthcare facilities. In this PPE game, each independent healthcare facility optimises its own storage utilisation in order to keep its PPE cost at a minimum. Such a model can reduce peak demand considerably when applied to a variable PPE consumption profile. Experiments conducted for NHS England regions using actual data confirm that the challenge of securing PPE supply during disasters such as COVID-19 can be eased if proper stock management procedures are adopted. These procedures can include early stockpiling, increasing storage capacities and implementing measures that can prolong the time period between successive infection waves, such as social distancing measures. Simulation results suggest that the provision of PPE dedicated storage space can be a viable solution to avoid straining PPE supply chains in case a second wave of COVID-19 infections occurs.

Suggested Citation

  • Khaled Abedrabboh & Matthias Pilz & Zaid Al-Fagih & Othman S Al-Fagih & Jean-Christophe Nebel & Luluwah Al-Fagih, 2021. "Game theory to enhance stock management of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 outbreak," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(2), pages 1-21, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0246110
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0246110
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246110
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246110&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0246110?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elodie Adida & Po-Ching DeLaurentis & Mark Lawley, 2011. "Hospital stockpiling for disaster planning," IISE Transactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(5), pages 348-362.
    2. Peng Sun & Liu Yang & Francis de Véricourt, 2009. "Selfish Drug Allocation for Containing an International Influenza Pandemic at the Onset," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(6), pages 1320-1332, December.
    3. Hammerstein, Peter & Selten, Reinhard, 1994. "Game theory and evolutionary biology," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 28, pages 929-993, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chelsea Greene & Zelda B. Zabinsky & David Sarley & Laila Akhlaghi, 2024. "Inventory and order management for healthcare commodities during a pandemic," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 337(1), pages 105-133, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mahmoud Mahfouz & Angelos Filos & Cyrine Chtourou & Joshua Lockhart & Samuel Assefa & Manuela Veloso & Danilo Mandic & Tucker Balch, 2019. "On the Importance of Opponent Modeling in Auction Markets," Papers 1911.12816, arXiv.org.
    2. Kulsum, Umma & Alam, Muntasir & Kamrujjaman, Md., 2024. "Modeling and investigating the dilemma of early and delayed vaccination driven by the dynamics of imitation and aspiration," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    3. Funk, Matt, 2008. "On the Problem of Sustainable Economic Development: A Theoretical Solution to this Prisoner's Dilemma," MPRA Paper 19025, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 08 Jun 2008.
    4. Linus Nyiwul, 2021. "Epidemic Control and Resource Allocation: Approaches and Implications for the Management of COVID-19," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 9(2), pages 283-305, December.
    5. Dufwenberg, Martin & Güth, Werner, 1997. "Indirect evolution versus strategic delegation: A comparison of two approaches to explaining economic institutions," SFB 373 Discussion Papers 1997,28, Humboldt University of Berlin, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes.
    6. Hongjuan Zhang & Haibing Liu & Rongkai Chen, 2025. "Policy-Driven Dynamics in Sustainable Recycling: Evolutionary Dynamics on Multiple Networks with Case Insights from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(11), pages 1-30, June.
    7. Dufwenberg, Martin & Guth, Werner, 1999. "Indirect evolution vs. strategic delegation: a comparison of two approaches to explaining economic institutions," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 281-295, June.
    8. Balazs Pejo & Gergely Biczok, 2020. "Corona Games: Masks, Social Distancing and Mechanism Design," Papers 2006.06674, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2020.
    9. Werner Güth & Hartmut Kliemt, 1998. "The Indirect Evolutionary Approach:," Rationality and Society, , vol. 10(3), pages 377-399, August.
    10. Martin Kaae Jensen & Alexandros Rigos, 2012. "Evolutionary Games with Group Selection," Discussion Papers 13-05, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    11. Aakil M. Caunhye & Xiaofeng Nie, 2018. "A Stochastic Programming Model for Casualty Response Planning During Catastrophic Health Events," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(2), pages 437-453, March.
    12. Coskun, Abdullah & Salman, F. Sibel & Pashapour, Amirreza, 2024. "Relief item inventory planning under centralized and decentralized bilateral cooperation and uncertain transshipment quantities," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    13. Héctor Escobar-Cuevas & Erik Cuevas & Alberto Luque-Chang & Oscar Barba-Toscano & Marco Pérez-Cisneros, 2024. "Enhancing Metaheuristic Algorithm Performance Through Structured Population and Evolutionary Game Theory," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-44, November.
    14. Shaoqing Geng & Yu Gong & Hanping Hou & Jianliang Yang & Bhakti Stephan Onggo, 2024. "Resource management in disaster relief: a bibliometric and content-analysis-based literature review," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 343(1), pages 263-292, December.
    15. Aumann, Robert J. & Güth, Werner, 1998. "Species survival and evolutionary stability in sustainable habitats: The concept of ecological stability," SFB 373 Discussion Papers 1998,67, Humboldt University of Berlin, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes.
    16. Morrison, William G., 1996. "Instincts as reflex choice: Does loss of temper have strategic value?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 335-356, December.
    17. Guihua Wang, 2022. "Stay at home to stay safe: Effectiveness of stay‐at‐home orders in containing the COVID‐19 pandemic," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(5), pages 2289-2305, May.
    18. Lotty E. Westerink‐Duijzer & Loe P. J. Schlicher & Marieke Musegaas, 2020. "Core Allocations for Cooperation Problems in Vaccination," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(7), pages 1720-1737, July.
    19. Gerald Oeser & Pietro Romano, 2021. "Exploring risk pooling in hospitals to reduce demand and lead time uncertainty," Operations Management Research, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 78-94, June.
    20. El-Seidy, Essam & Soliman, Karim.M., 2016. "Iterated symmetric three-player prisoner’s dilemma game," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 282(C), pages 117-127.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0246110. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.