IMPROVING THE OPERATIONS PERFORMANCE OF A CHEMOTHERAPY CLINIC: A TWO-PHASE APPROACH
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7166/29-4-1941Keywords:
Chemotherapy planning, System dynamics, Mixed-integer programmingAbstract
The increasing number of cancer patients, coupled with the development and use of new, efficient medications, has increased the demand for cancer service care. Outpatient chemotherapy clinics (OCCs) are complex facilities, due to the large variability in treatment durations resulting from different cancer types and chemotherapy protocols under limited resources. In this paper we address the operations planning problem encountered by OCCs, of optimally assigning the first days of treatment for a set of new patients in tandem with the presence of existing patients. We propose a two-phase approach to optimise the start days of a set of new patients. In the first stage, a system dynamics (SD) simulation model, adapted from the literature, is used to find the critical days for the new patients — i.e., the upper bounds by which patients must begin treatment. The optimal start days are then determined using a new mixed-integer programming (MIP) model. The results show that the optimal start days can be effectively prioritised and evaluated using simulation and mathematical programming
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish in the Journal agree to the following terms:- Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this Journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the Journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this Journal.
