Mobility and Logistics as a Service for Healthcare (MLaaS4H): Spatial Economic Models (SEMs) for Healthcare Facilities

The mobility of people and the transport of goods play an increasing role in the urbanization process. The Mobility as a Service (MaaS) paradigm represents an innovation for passenger mobility, while freight transport is evolving towards Logistics as a Service (LaaS). Hospitals act as major urban attractors, influencing both the travel patterns of workers and patients and the logistics flows associated with the distribution of goods and medicines. The hospital location generates significant territorial effects, impacting the spatial distribution of the population and economic activities. The combination of MaaS and LaaS for Healthcare generates the new acronym MLaaS4H (Mobility Logistics as a Service for Healthcare). This study analyzes these effects using consolidated Spatial Economic Models (SEMs), applied to a controlled benchmark system to evaluate the impacts of MaaS and the construction of a new hospital. The results show that changes in accessibility determine a modal shift from private transport to MaaS; the new hospital, with more employees, determines an increase in residents and employment; the land prices influence the spatial distribution of the population. These first findings can be replicated analytically using simple pen-and-paper computations and can be extended to the logistics component. They could offer useful support for land-use and transport planners, although parameter calibration and model validation against real-world case studies are still required.