Data-driven optimization of health supply chains in the acute elderly care
Motivation: In the next decade, the accessibility of our healthcare system is at high risk, due to the ageing population and shortages of healthcare professionals. Without proper action, the waiting times for healthcare services for the patient-in-need will become – and in many cases already are – prohibitively large, and the cost of health will become excessively high. This raises the urgent need for ways to more effectively use the available resources in our healthcare system. Despite the fact that waiting lines in healthcare are high on the political agenda, a good understanding of the performance of logistic supply chains in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and the underlying capacity limitations is lacking. The recent advances in data analytics, modeling techniques and the availability of data collected by healthcare institutions provide great potential to face these challenges. In this project, we aim to exploit this potential.
Goals: Motivated by this, the high-level goals of this project are the following:
- Develop data-driven models to get a grip on the complex dynamics of the healthcare supply chains in the care system for older adults.
- Use these models to gain insight into the ‘journeys’ of patients through the system, and into effectiveness of interventions in the elderly care system.
- Develop and validate a Proof of Concept (PoC) Decision Support System (DSS) – basically consisting of a suite of dashboard-based DSSs – that enables both practitioners and policy makers to answer what-if questions with respect to the implications of interventions and policy decisions prior to their roll-out.
- Validate and evaluate the effectiveness of the DSS in a pilot setting, and subsequently, into a live operational setting.
Activities: To meet these goals, we will use the results of the successful project NWO TTW project ‘DOLCE VITA’ as the starting point for our investigations, which gives the proposed project an enormous head-start. More specifically, we plan to bring the results of DOLCE VITA to the next level, in different ways:
(1) develop stochastic quantitative models and methods to describe the complex interactions between the stakeholders in the hospital and long-term care system for older adults (iterative process);
(2) develop a DSS suite – taking for the models/methods developed in DOLCE VITA as the starting point – and use the feedback from practice to refine/extend the models for optimal alignment with the practicalities and limitations of the daily operation in care for older adults (iterative process);
(3) subject the DSS suite to real-life testing in a pilot setting;
(4) go live and validate the DSS suite in an operational setting.
Work packages: The work will be partitioned into six work packages:
WP0: Project management;
WP1: Modeling and flow optimization for long-term care services;
WP2: Modeling and flow optimization for short-term residential care service;
WP3: Developing a ‘waterbed model’ for the complex interactions between the players in the acute care chain;
WP4: Design, development, pilot evaluation and live testing of the developed PoC DSS suite;
WP5: Dissemination and exposure.
Expected results: The project will lead to a set of new planning models, implemented in a DSS suite of planning tools for improving the patient flow in the acute care system for older adults, validated in an operational setting. The potential cost savings of the proposed project are on the order of M€700 annually.
Alignment with the research priority themes of the Topsector Logistics: The overall research focus of this project is in line with the priority themes supply-chain coordination, data-driven logistics, and human capital.
Innovativeness: The innovation in this project lies in (1) the development and validation of new models for optimizing supply chains in the acute elderly healthcare, and in (2) the fact that we bring DSSs based on these models into real-life practice, used in an operational setting.
Valorization and implementation strategy: The Valorization and Implementation (V&I) strategy will be led and operated by SIGRA [16], a partnership of >150 hospitals and healthcare organizations in the Amsterdam region, following a well-established stepwise approach in bringing the PoC DSS suite into operational use.
