Track: Undergraduate Research Competition

Abstract

Drug shortages are a global issue that every country has suffered from. It appears when a specific product is not meeting the demand of a hospital. It has many causes and effects that can intensely harm the patient's health. This study aims to introduce a management strategy for controlling and handling the inventory of drugs in Kuwait's healthcare facilities in case of any drug shortages. The linear Programming mathematical model method is used to minimize the occurrence of drug shortages among healthcare facilities, manage the drug inventory in the hospitals, and control drug shortages in healthcare facilities. The proposed solution method's results show that the drug shortage problem can be solved optimally by distributing drugs between health centers. In addition, the solution methodology can shed light on health sector managers about the solution to the drug shortage problem.