Simulation, optimisation and forecasting are mathematical approaches used within the discipline of management science (also known as operations research) with the aim of solving business problems. Our aim is to try and develop mathematical models for health planning which remain practical and provide real value, without becoming overly complicated.
A number of staff at Emendo have management science degrees and/or have worked in health environments, so we understand the types of solutions that add real value to hospital operations.
Predicting patient flow involves creating a model which adequately represents a planning scenario, and then running it to determine the outcome.
With theatre/OR for instance, we have created a model of the sessions and the type of patients that go through them. We then use simulation to create a patient flow model that tracks the patient journey throughout all areas of hospital operations - from which wards they will go into, what staffing resource they will need, which inpatient beds they will use, how many days they will stay in hospital, and so on. This model then also enables us to predict whether a hospital can achieve let’s say the number of hip or cataracts operations that they might want to perform. This allows planners to build a scenario for patients and times of day etc to ensure the hospital will meet those numbers.
We did this, for example, for a Canadian health authority who wanted to plan for performing varying numbers of joint operations across the week. By modelling these we were able to predict the admissions and peaks and help them to plan resources to mitigate the peaks.
Andrae Gaeth Product Specialist, Emendo