Optimization of Healthcare Emergency Departments by Agent-Based Simulation

Abstract

This paper presents an Agent-Based modeling and simulation to design a decision support system (DSS) for the operation of Healthcare Emergency Departments (ED). This DSS aims to aid EDs managers in setting up strategies and management guidelines to optimize the operation of EDs. This ongoing research is being performed by the Research Group on Individual Oriented Modeling (IoM) of CAOS in the University Autonoma of Barcelona (UAB) in close collaboration with Hospital ED Staff. The simulation main objective is to optimize the performance of such complex and dynamic Healthcare ED. Optimization is performed to find the optimal ED staff configuration, which consists of doctors, triage nurses, and admission personnel, i.e. a multidimensional problem. Two different indexes, to minimize patient waiting time, and to maximize patient throughput, were proposed and tested and their results obtained appying an exhaustive search technique, yield promising results and better understanding of the problem.

Simulation Optimization of Search and Rescue in Disaster Relief Based on Distributed Auction Mechanism

“…Before we built the conceptual model, we had gathered a lot of detailed information about SAR through the interviews carried out with first responders and experts who specialize in on-site search and rescue in disaster. In this model, shown in Figure 1, two types of active agents are defined, namely victims and rescue teams, and they can act upon their own initiative [28]. Apart from the active agents, there are passive agents in this model, such as the buried sites.…”

“…They can sense the environment, interact with other agents, and plan the next actions according to their objectives, such as searching for victims, rescuing a buried site, calling for cooperation and so on [23]. as the input that agents receive and the outputs that they produce [28]. Auctioneers would communicate with bidders who are within the scope of cooperation if necessary, sending messages about victims' coordinates, buried depth, etc.…”

“…The interaction takes place mostly between rescue teams, which include auctioneers and bidders, and the interaction is carried out through communication. The communication is modeled as the input that agents receive and the outputs that they produce [28]. Auctioneers would communicate with bidders who are within the scope of cooperation if necessary, sending messages about victims' coordinates, buried depth, etc.…”

The Impact of Demographic Changes on the Organization of Emergency Medical Services: the Case of Slovenia

“…This is a public service that performs medical treatment for suddenly sick or injured individuals and is an integral component of the public healthcare network at the primary (prehospital) and secondary levels of health care. Over the past twenty years, researchers from most developed countries report on coming to terms with trends that reflect an increase in the number of EMS treatments performed, particularly as a consequence of negative demographic trends, epidemiological and social changes (Fischer et al, 2000;Cabrera et al, 2011). From this perspective, it is therefore necessary to understand current trends towards the reorganization of the EMS system, which we are also witness to in our environment.…”

Managing urgent care in hospitals

“…For the ED, the most studied tactical planning problem is staff-shift scheduling [1,3,5,23,29,36,39,74,85,92,99,108,118,124,136,144,145,161,188,191,210,211,216,220,250,251]. Shift scheduling deals with the problem of selecting what types of shifts are to be scheduled, and how many and what types of staff are to be allocated to these shifts.…”