TIMELY AND EFFICIENT PLANNING OF TREATMENTS THROUGH INTELLIGENT SCHEDULING
The innovation cycle of the University of Twente in action: a journey of CHOIR research being brought to practice and back
Nikky Kortbeek
Over the past decade, the research results of the Center for Healthcare Operations Improvement and Research (CHOIR) of the University of Twente have shown that building on techniques from Operations Research and Management, and focusing on the management of operations, can lead to a better understanding and functioning of healthcare delivery. The CHOIR research group is currently one of the most active and productive research groups in the field of Operations Research and Management in Healthcare. Through a series of more than 150 MSc projects since 2003 and 6 completed PhD projects since 2010 (Aleida Braaksma being the seventh), CHOIR has demonstrated the potential for operations management results for logistical improvement. Following its mission to maximize practical impact, it also recently founded the spin-off company Rhythm.
Please join a short trip along some of the addressed research topics and their applications. From opening an extra operating room at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital (NKI-AVL) without additional bed capacity, to efficient nurse staffing at the Academic Medical Center Amsterdam (AMC), and flexible planning of physiotherapists at the St Maartenskliniek (SMK). This storyline along several consecutive research topics and valorization results serves as a living of example of CHOIR's innovation cycle: new insights continuously leading to new questions, in turn leading to new research and new solutions.
Nikky Kortbeek‘s professional career takes place on the interface between science and practice. After being a research fellow at the University of Amsterdam working on optimization of inventory management of blood platelets, he joined the department Applied Mathematics of the University of Twente (UT) for a Ph.D. program. He combined doing research with being a consultant patient logistics at the department of Quality and Process Innovation of the Academic Medical Center (AMC) in Amsterdam. In November 2012, he received his Ph.D. degree with the predicate cum laude for defending the dissertation "Quality-driven Efficiency in Healthcare". Next, he was appointed in het AMC as research program leader in healthcare logistics; and as a postdoc at the UT research group CHOIR (Center for Healthcare Operations Improvement and Research) in the area of healthcare logistics. Since 2014, he is co-founder and CEO of Rhythm, the spin-off company of CHOIR. Rhythm’s mission is to support healthcare professionals in improving the quality and efficiency of their care delivery, by offering a combination of consulting, education and software-solutions focused on process optimization and capacity planning.