There are over 80,000 patients in the U.S. waiting for a kidney transplant. Under the current allocation policy, the vast majority of deceased organs are allocated locally. This causes significant disparities in waiting times and access to transplant across different geographical areas. We propose an operational solution that offers affordable jet services (OrganJET) to patients on the transplant waiting list, allowing them to multiple-list in different, and possibly very distant, donor service areas (DSA) of their choosing. We model patients' problem of choosing a location to multiple list through a selfish routing game in which each patient tries to minimize his “congestion cost," i.e. maximize his life expectancy. The equilibrium solution (using UNOS data) reveals that OrganJET helps remedy current disparities provided a small fraction of patients choose to multiple list, resulting in more uniform waiting times and access to transplant in the US. The equilibrium solution also identifies the network of fly-out/fly-in DSAs. For implementation purposes, we select a subnetwork of this solution, which retains most of the value offered by OrganJET. In other words, we present a partial but implementable solution (using UNOS data). Finally, we consider several extensions of the basic model to show that multiple listing can increase system-wide total life years and decrease organ wastage.

This is joint work with Anton Skaro (Northwestern Medical School) and Sridhar Tayur (CMU, Tepper).

Bio: Baris Ata is an Associate Professor of Operations Management at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, where he has been since 2003. He received a B.S. in Industrial Engineering (1997) from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, and an M.S. in EES&OR (1999), Business Research (2000), Mathematics (2001), and Statistics (2002), and a Ph.D. in Business Administration (2003) from Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. His research areas are: Dynamic Control of Manufacturing and Service Operations; Revenue Management; Health-care Management; and Sustainable Operations. He is the founding director of the Operations Management Ph.D. Program at Kellogg; and currently serves an Associate Editor for Management Science, M&SOM, and IIE Transactions in Healthcare Engineering, and as an Area Editor for SORMS (Surveys in ORMS).

Unable to make it in person?
Watch it live (or later) at mediasite.video.cornell.edu/mediasit...d=7641c4b55f174c4894f9a782f351bc471d