Chana Joffe-Walt

Related: Fairness, Efficiency and Flexibility in Organ Allocation for Kidney Transplantation Trichakis, Nikolaos

Erin Zlomek

Related: Fairness, Efficiency and Flexibility in Organ Allocation for Kidney Transplantation Trichakis, Nikolaos

Dennis Fisher

Because of an organ shortage, hundreds or even thousands of people miss out on needed organ transplants each year. Business researchers at Harvard and MIT are rethinking how kidney transplants are allocated to give patients longer lives. An interview with professor Nikolaos Trichakis. Key concepts include:

• A new empirical model for allocating available kidneys to patients provides the potential for a system with greater fairness and longer life outcomes for those who receive transplants.
• The method—the work of Nikolaos Trichakis of Harvard Business School and Dimitris Bertsimas and Vivek F. Farias, both of MIT's Sloan School—can help policy designers create the most equitable point system based on their chosen constraints and criteria.
• In early simulations, the model suggests that life-year expectancies for the program can be increased by up to 8 percent, depending on variables plugged into the process.

Related: Fairness, Efficiency and Flexibility in Organ Allocation for Kidney Transplantation Trichakis, Nikolaos