The course provides students with the fundamental knowledge to understand and analyse logistics processes in the health sector, with a focus on demand management, resource allocation and flow optimisation. The course covers both ordinary contexts (hospitals, care networks) and emergency situations (humanitarian logistics), providing theoretical and practical tools to address complex challenges related to public health and emergency management.
At the end of the course, the student will be able to:
Basic knowledge of descriptive statistics, Excel software and the Python programming language.
Lectures with slide support, guided exercises on simplified datasets, discussion of real case studies, small group work on modelling and solving logistical problems. Materials provided by the lecturer: slides, selected articles, exercises. The use of Excel and Python will be required for the exercises. Further resources will be available on the Moodle e-learning platform.
Oral project presentation (also to be carried out in groups). The student must demonstrate mastery of the fundamental concepts of the course and the ability to apply them to realistic project cases. Expository clarity, reasoning ability and competence in the use of models and methods analysed in the classroom will be assessed.
Introduction to healthcare logistics
Humanitarian logistics
Demand forecasting in the health sector
The distribution problem (Vehicle Routing Problem)
The course originates from content developed in international research projects (e.g. Erasmus+ CoDeMo) and applied academic experiences in healthcare. Examples from hospitals and NGOs will be presented. The course is also a useful basis for those who intend to continue with theses or projects in the field of health logistics.
