megaHEALTH: the wellness explosion

This post is a preliminary look at my process to lead into Monday's post.

The problem is this: the drugs needed to treat AIDS are produced by GSK all over the planet but are not reaching all the areas they need them. The idea is this: that the GSK megaHEALTH empire must self-divide and disperse itself to the distant areas of the planet where it is most lacked. So the question is this: how can these supplies be efficiently transported to these areas?

In the most rural areas, part of the problem is that if the drugs reach these villages, by way of charity or another form of goodwill, the people don't know who is to get the drugs and how they are to take them. Not only is the spread of medication needed, assistance with drugs and equipment - such as testing equipment - is needed.

I've chosen to pursue megaHEALTH at three different scales: the global scale, the regional scale, and the human scale, and the following images and explanations should show the direction I want to go.

My investigation of the global scale involves unifying the GSK empire and reworking the network. Each country (and some groups of countries) has a branch of GSK that exists at its own entity and privately sells to whatever government and/or private healthcare system can afford the drugs. As you can tell from the following mapping from the previous assignment, the network is inefficient.

current GSK distribution network

To help improve this problem, I wish to regionalize these 82 manufacturing plants, which are all located in or just outside of major cities. This is a clearer map very simply mapping the current locations of GSK.

GSK's manufacturing plants

The next map indicates what it would mean to regionalize the current plants. The rings indicate the particular plant's production capacity.

regionalizing the current GSK plants

As you can see from this previous map, regionalizing the plants as they are located does little good to many areas, even in the United States. Here is a map strategically relocating these plants based on population density and AIDS prevalence, and their production capacities are reestablished according to the prevalence of AIDS in the region.

relocated GSK plants

relocated GSK plants and reestablished production capacities

Reworking the network was a simple redirection of paths; to become more detailed, we have to examine this on a regional scale. What is the relationship between the manufacturing plant and its own city, the manufacturing plant and its neighboring cities, and most importantly for this project, the plant and the surrounding "remote locations."

conceptual collage of the "wellness pods" being distributed in a region

The first two scales are network and transit related. These are important to consider because it is a global company which addresses a global crisis, but it is also important to consider what exactly is being transported. Mechanically, what is the process by which the drugs will reach another city or a remote location? Once they are there, how will they be administered - how will the materials and the information be spread? AIDS is a human condition, and so it is quite crucial to address the human scale at an intense level of detail.

My next post will include a detail of what the headquarters (England) will do as a city, a city which is the root of the manufacturing plants mapped all over the planet. This city will distribute these, which are composed of the pods, which will be distributed outward to the cities and villages. This is shown in the diagram below. The next post will include details of each of these levels.