Review on Decision Support Systems used for Resource Allocation in Health Crises

Abstract

A disaster or crisis can be stated as a serious disruption occurring for a certain period of time, which could cause loss of human lives, properties, and disrupt the day-to-day life of people. Managing such situations is always a challenge due to various reasons. Especially, allocating and providing resources to manage disaster situations to restore the normal life of people is the main challenge in a disaster situation. Having a proper mechanism for resource allocation could save thousands of human lives as well as properties. Modern smart technologies play a vital role in designing and developing solutions for efficient and effective resource allocation mechanisms. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to work from home using digital platforms. Those digital platforms have been able to support people to do their routine work while maintaining social distancing which minimizes the spread of Covid-19. On the other hand, those digital platforms provide an easy and fast way for healthcare officials to reach infected patients to provide necessary treatments and care. Present research critically reviews the past research on managing resources in health crises particularly falls under pandemics and epidemics.