Identifying Breakdowns in the Integrated Transplantation Network

Organ transplantation is a modern marvel of medicine. Yet even though the supply of organs has increased over time, the number of people that need organs has increased at a larger rate. The scope of the project is to create a supply and demand model of the transplantation network and to determine where the breakdowns are occurring. The transplantation supply process requires that the potential donor die either via brain death or cardiac death in a hospital. The organ or organs are then harvested by an organ procurement organization (OPO) who obtains approval from the family to collect the organ and then transfers it to the transplant hospital where the organ is transplanted into the recipient. This thesis seeks to explain the transplantation process and some of the breakdowns in the supply portion of the model, specifically with the OPOs and transplant hospitals.