Logistics in healthcare: a selected review of literature from 2010 to 2022
Diana Božić, Darijo Šego, Ratko Stanković, Mario Šafran
Abstract
In recent years, healthcare systems have faced problems procuring medicines, and medical materials, cooperation with suppliers, rising costs, and disposal of medical waste. One of the health system's goals is optimisation without reducing the quality of service for the patient. Supply chain and logistics, a scientific and economic activity that optimises supply, storage, inventory management, transportation, demand forecasting, and distribution, have played a significant role in optimising the health system in the last few years. Motivated by the recent pandemic of COVID 19 and resulting supply, storage and inventory problems, a review of selected scientific literature available on scientific databases ScienceDirect of Elsevier and Web of Science of Clarivate Analytics was conducted. Scientific literature dealing with medical waste and connected logistic activities were included in the review. A growing trend of research in this field has been perceived in the last three years, thus proving that the real healthcare sector is becoming aware of logistics problems and their importance.