One of the most important health care services is emergency medical service as it plays a vital role in saving people's lives and reducing the rate of mortality and morbidity. Over the last years, many review papers have discussed emergency medical services (EMS) location problems, however, only few review papers consider the full range of EMS systems. This review paper tries to fill this gap. Our review introduces the concept of emergency care pathway following the current trend in health care systems, i.e., shifting the central role from health care providers to patients. Considering the emergency care pathway, we provide a broad literature review and analysis in order to identify emerging challenges for future research.

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In this paper, we propose a location model for the optimal organization of transplant system. Instead of simulation approach, which is typical when facing many health care applications, our approach is distinctively based on a mathematical programming formulation of the relevant problem. In particular, we focus on the critical role of time in transplantation process as well as on a spatial distribution of transplant centers. The allocation of transplantable organs across regions with the objective of attaining regional equity in health care, is the aim of this paper. Our model differs from previous modeling approaches in that it considers the nationwide reorganization of the transplant system, identifying system barriers that may impair equity and efficiency. The demolition of these barriers may leads on a reduction of waiting lists and of wasted organs. We provide the basic structure and the properties of the model, and validate it on a real case study. The experimental validation of the model demonstrates the effectiveness and robustness of our proposal.