Healthcare

OR has a major role to play in healthcare, both in administrative logistics and in effectively and efficiently providing treatment. Given the enormous complexity of the healthcare system (the NHS is the UK’s largest employer), it is not surprising that many healthcare issues create major challenges.

There are many broad challenges in planning capacities and locations of facilities such as hospitals, walk-in centres, NHS Direct, Critical Care Units, A&E departments, etc. Such planning needs to provide for patient satisfaction, reduce waiting times, and meet performance targets while meeting cost constraints. Many of these challenges have already yielded to new forms of mathematical analysis. The LANCS Initiative will make further progress in this area, with particular emphasis on the development of advanced mathematical techniques to aid decision making in complex healthcare scenarios.

Major healthcare challenges often involve complex interactions between OR problems, each of which is complex in its own right. Examples include:

• Controlling a potential flu pandemic
• Planning the future healthcare workforce in the context of an ageing population
• Scheduling patient pathways
• Controlling the escalating costs of long term conditions such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease
• Managing global supply chain logistics for pharmaceutical and medical products
• Designing mass vaccination programmes in the event of bioterrorism
• Optimising the use of new non-invasive technology in cancer treatment.

There remains much progress to be made on understanding the interactions within such systems. The LANCS Initiative will take on the task of exploring the resulting formidable mathematical and computational issues. It will use rigorous mathematical analysis to underpin the pioneering applied work currently being undertaken. The results will inform the development of decision support systems.

related resources:

	LANCS Initiative
»	Healthcare
	Green Logistics
	Transport
	Building the theory for the practice

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