An Agile Approach for Healthcare Simulation Modeling
Date
2013-08-30
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Abstract
This research presents an agile healthcare simulation modeling (AHSM) approach to support the full life cycle of decision-making for managing the operations of multi-unit healthcare systems (MUHSs) in a rapid and flexible manner. The approach involves developing and maintaining simulation models at the unit level, and integrating the unit simulation models to address different decision problems at different levels of the MUHS. At the operational level, AHSM includes two stages: 1) Planning - identify the hierarchical structures of a MUHS and perform an architectural design of the overall SM studies; and 2) Executing - develop unit, subsystem and the overall MUHS simulation models. The existence of the MUHS hierarchical structures is supported by a conceptual model, nearly decomposable-complex adaptive systems (ND-CASs), which is introduced to represent and describe the operations of MUHSs.
Following the introduction of the AHSM approach, a system decomposition technique based on principal component analysis (PCA) is proposed for identifying the hierarchical structures of MUHSs with a large number of units, and a neural network (NN) based simulation metamodeling technique is suggested to simplify and represent unit simulation models. In addition, a flexible model integration (FMI) approach is recommended to guide the use of different model integration approaches in the development of MUHS simulation models.
The real-world potential of AHSM is demonstrated via three application examples.
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Keywords
Management, Health Care Management, Operations Research
Citation
Xu, Y. S. (2013). An Agile Approach for Healthcare Simulation Modeling (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24809