Medical resource preparation and allocation for humanitarian assistance based on module organization.

Background: This research aims to associate the allocation of medical resources with the function of the modular organization and the possible needs for humanitarian assistance missions.

Methods: The overseas humanitarian medical assistance mission, which was sent after a disaster on the hospital ship Peace Ark, part of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, was considered as study model. The cases used for clustering and matching sample formation were randomly selected from the existing information related to Peace Ark's mission.

Results: Categories of the reusable resources clustered by this research met the requirement of the actual consumption almost completely (more than 95%) and the categories of non-reusable resources met the requirement by more than 80%. In the mission's original resource preparing plan, more than 30% of the non-reusable resource categories remained unused during the mission. In the original resource preparing plan, some key non-reusable resources inventories were completely exhausted at the end of the mission, while 5% to 30% of non-reusable resources remained in the resource allocation plan generated by this research at the end of the mission.

Conclusions: The medical resource allocation plan generated here can enhance the supporting level for the humanitarian assistance mission. This research could lay the foundation for an assistant decision-making system for humanitarian assistance mission.