Route planning: This is how the corona sample gets to the laboratory and the oxygen to the patient

The coronavirus has dominated every news program for weeks. One important aspect is largely neglected: the importance of transport logistics. Every day, driver services transport thousands of samples from alleged Covid-19 infected people to laboratories. To process these tests accurately and efficiently, you need perfect timing.

In practice, it looks like this: The laboratory's driving services drive to their senders and pick up the samples there. Senders are usually general practitioners, clinics, etc. On this occasion, the medical practices also receive new collection systems, i.e. the material required for taking samples. For example, for corona samples that then have to be brought to the laboratory. The challenge for the driver service is to be very punctual. If you arrive too early, not all samples have been taken, if you arrive too late at the laboratory, the quality of the samples may suffer and the test results may be falsified. In addition, samples must be regularly received in the laboratories so that the systems can work continuously. Basically, the laboratory tours are usually mercilessly overbooked. It is therefore necessary to find out in good time which customers are actually being approached on a tour and which are not, e.g. because there are no samples.

In addition, there is currently another medical bottleneck scenario in the area of ​​tour planning: Especially in times of the pandemic, it seems important that seriously ill people can sometimes be cared for at home. This applies, for example, to people with certain lung diseases who are treated by nursing staff with medical liquid oxygen. These patients either receive their oxygen in bottles or have small tanks that need to be refilled regularly. For the suppliers of medical gases, planning is very complex due to individual customer requirements. Often each day is planned individually, which is very time-consuming.