Deceased Organ Matching in Australia
This addresses the challenge of improving organ transplant outcomes for patients in Australia, but it appears incremental as it focuses on adapting existing mechanisms to a specific context.
The paper tackles the problem of matching deceased donor kidneys to patients in Australia, where donor age has increased, by designing and evaluating several mechanisms that respect the online nature of the allocation process.
Despite efforts to increase the supply of organs from living donors, most kidney transplants performed in Australia still come from deceased donors. The age of these donated organs has increased substantially in recent decades as the rate of fatal accidents on roads has fallen. The Organ and Tissue Authority in Australia is therefore looking to design a new mechanism that better matches the age of the organ to the age of the patient. I discuss the design, axiomatics and performance of several candidate mechanisms that respect the special online nature of this fair division problem.