This paper demonstrates an alternative way to accommodate overbooking, accounting for the prediction of an individual patient's show/no-show status. The predictive no-show model leads to a dynamic overbooking policy that could improve patient waiting, overtime, and total costs in a clinic day while maintaining a full scheduling capacity.

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To my children, my wife, and my parents iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to all of the people who have provided encouragement, help, and support during my Ph.D. process. First of all, I would like to thank Professor Walton Hancock for his inspirations and his professional guidance. He is not only my co-chair but also the best mentor I have ever had during my journey in University of Michigan. It has been the most valuable and rewarding experience working with him. I would not have achieved this far without his support and help. I would also like to express my thanks to my other co-chair Professor Gary Herrin for his guidance and support. Also, I would like to thank my committee members, Professor David Mendez from Public Health and Professor Mark Van Oyen for their advices and for their efforts in reviewing my thesis.

Engineering has been playing an important role in serving and advancing healthcare. The term "Healthcare Engineering" has been used by professional societies, universities, scientific authors, and the healthcare industry for decades. However, the definition of "Healthcare Engineering" remains ambiguous. The purpose of this position paper is to present a definition of Healthcare Engineering as an academic discipline, an area of research, a field of specialty, and a profession. Healthcare Engineering is defined in terms of what it is, who performs it, where it is performed, and how it is performed, including its purpose, scope, topics, synergy, education/training, contributions, and prospects.Keywords: Healthcare engineering, definition, purpose, scope, topics, synergy, jobs, education, training, contributions, future PREAMBLEEngineering has been playing a crucial role in serving healthcare, bringing about revolutionary advances in healthcare. Contributions have been made by engineers from almost all engineering disciplines, such as Biomedical, Chemical, Civil, Computer, Electrical, Environmental, Industrial, Information, Materials, Mechanical, Software, and Systems Engineering, as well as healthcare professionals such as physicians, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, allied health professionals, and health scientists who are engaged in supporting, improving, and/or advancing any aspect of healthcare through engineering approaches. "Healthcare Engineering" is the most appropriate term to encompass such a multi-disciplinary specialty, considering that advancing healthcare is the common goal for all such efforts made through engineering approaches. However, so far, a clear, rigorous definition of "Healthcare Engineering" has never been documented.Established over 50 years ago, the American Society of Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) [1] was one of the first to publicize the term "Healthcare Engineering". ASHE, as well as its many local affiliate societies (e.g., [2]), has been mainly dedicated to the health care physical environment, which represents only one sector of what engineers do in healthcare. David and Goodman [3] first used the term "healthcare engineers" in the scientific literature in 1989, where the critical role of the engineer in the healthcare delivery system was discussed. A number of academic programs have adopted the term "Healthcare Engineering" in their names (e.g., [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]). However, the description/definition of "Healthcare Engineering" by these programs varies, as each institution has designed its program based on its own distinctive interest, strength, focus, and emphasis, and hence created a different description/definition accordingly. Each of these versions of description/definition excellently portrays a certain facet of Healthcare Engineering, though none reflects all dimensions of the discipline. Further, the Journal of Healthcare Engineering [14], launched in 2010, focuses on engineering involved in all aspects of healthcare delivery processes and systems....