Patients with terminal kidney failure require either frequent dialysis or a new, donated kidney to survive. Donor kidneys can be found via cadavers or by finding a willing and compatible living donor – usually a family member. Then, medical and psychological work is done to determine whether that donor is indeed compatible. If tests determine that, for example, the donor's kidney is not likely to be accepted by the patient's body, then the process halts and restarts.
One recent innovation has been the emergence of a process called kidney exchange, where patients with terminal kidney failure, who cannot find a match among their own possible donors, can "swap donors" with other kidney patients in a similar situation. Still, while certain efficiencies are achieved through the use of data solutions that accelerate the search and matching process, there are still some challenges.
A new study, however, has sought to address these challenges and introduced the concept of "failure-aware" algorithmic matching to improve success rates. The study, "Failure-Aware Kidney Exchange," was conducted by John Dickerson of the University of Maryland, and Ariel Procaccia and Tuomas Sandholm of Carnegie Mellon University, and published in the INFORMS journal Management Science.
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Ashley Kilgore
Manager, Public Relations
INFORMS
Catonsville MD
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