Title of talk: Sustainable healthcare waste management: Learnings from pandemics like COVID-19 outbreak
Speaker: Dr. Vikas Thakur, Assistant Professor, School of Management, NIT Rourkela.
Venue: IEOR Seminar Hall, Second Floor, IEOR Building.
Day, Date and Time: Monday, August 8, 2022, 10 AM to 11 AM.
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has put the world economy at an unprecedented position and protecting society from the infection is at the core of all measures. As the COVID-19 virus stays longer on plastic and stainless steel materials, hence the healthcare wastes (HCW), coming out of the treatment of COVID-19 infected patients can be one of the potential route for transmission of infection. During the COVID-19 outbreak, the infectious waste is not only limited to the hospitals’ premises, but also comes from the households, where COVID-19 infected people are under home quarantine. Hence, keeping in mind the explosive growth in generation rates of infectious HCWs, the present talk is based on two major issues: developing sustainable HCWM system and handling sudden pressure of extra healthcare wastes on the existing infrastructure.
The first phase analyses the dimensions of sustainable HCWM by using a multi-method approach based on: PESTEL analysis, TISM and fuzzy- MICMAC techniques. The second phase targets to expand the treatment and disposal capacity by installing temporary healthcare waste treatment facilities (HCWTFs). The study proposes a hybrid methodology based on grey analytical hierarchy process (G-AHP) and grey operational competitiveness rating analysis (grey-OCRA) for prioritizing the evaluation criteria and selecting the optimal temporary HCWTF location by considering the experts’ inputs, respectively. The proposed methodology is applied to select the temporary HCWTF location in Sundargarh District, Odisha, India. The study identifies the four locations by using geographical information system (GIS) tools and sequences them as per the preferences given by the stakeholders on various identified criteria.
The study concluded that the policy framework for targeting political, legal and environmental issues should be the immediate concern of the worldwide governments and health officials. The effluent control and compliance to environmental laws being the output dimensions should be tracked regularly for ensuring the cleaner production in healthcare services. The PESTEL analysis will help the hospitals’ managers and policymakers to understand the macro-environment surrounding the HCWM. The study may be useful for the administration to set up the temporary facilities to quickly dispose of the extra HCWs during the pandemics.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Vikas thakur is working as an Assistant Professor (Grade-I) in the area of Operations and Supply Chain Management at School of Management, NIT Rourkela, Odisha since March, 2018. He has done his Ph.D. in Operations and supply chain management (“Study of waste management issues in Indian healthcare supply chain”) at IIT Roorkee under the supervision of Professor A. Ramesh. His academic interests include: Operations and project management; Operations research; Logistics & supply chain management; TQM and six sigma; Services operations management; and Business research methodology. His research areas include: healthcare waste management, municipal solid waste management, sustainability and circular economy, healthcare delivery system, supply chain finance, smart city operations, and industry 4.0. He has published 23 research articles in international journals of repute including: Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management; Journal of Enterprise Information Management; Journal of Cleaner Production; Waste Management & Research; Business Strategy & Environment; Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing and many more. He is working on several R&D projects in areas like: healthcare waste management, municipal solid waste management, smart city development, supply chain finance, etc.