Welcome to the ORAHS International Seminar Series!
Our next seminar on OR applied to Health Services is scheduled for April 30th.
The ORAHS International Seminar Series aims to provide state-of-the-art research talks for scholars worldwide who are active in the nexus of OR/OM and healthcare applications. We believe these seminars will prepare and support graduate students and researchers who are active in the field with the newest research conducted worldwide. Moreover, they provide opportunities for academic members to get acquainted and find possible future collaborations.
How to join?
The seminars are planned monthly, every last Tuesday of the month, via Zoom in the late afternoon (Europe), morning (US), or evening (Asia/Pacific).
Register now!
You can register here for the upcoming seminar on April 30th 2024.
Upcoming seminars
April 30th, 16:00-17:00 CEST - Prof. Mónica Oliveira (University of Lisbon, Portugal) - Advancing collaborative value modeling in health settings: From applications to novel tools
Title Advancing collaborative value modeling in health settings: From applications to novel tools
Abstract Many studies have pointed out low levels of implementation and adoption of operational research models in health settings, one of the main reasons being the lack of involvement of stakeholders and decision-makers in model development. To address the challenge of effectively engaging many stakeholders and experts in real-world decision analysis processes, both for knowledge construction and for stakeholder engagement, we have developed the Collaborative Value Modeling (CVM) framework. The CVM combines large-scale participatory Web-Delphi processes with smaller-scale decision conferencing or workshop processes to promote agreement in different modeling stages of multicriteria decision analysis. A wide range of recent CVM applications shows its success to support decision-making in health settings. In this presentation I describe key features of CVM use in distinct health cases and show different tools that are being developed to enhance its use. These include improving and testing protocols of questioning (applying behavioral operational research), enhancing Delphi processes with problem structuring methods, developing tools to aggregate individual judgments, as well as tools for fitting value functions. Furthermore, the potential use of CVM within simulation and optimization models will be discussed.
Bio Mónica Oliveira is Full Professor in Health Care Management Science at the Engineering and Management Department of Instituto Superior Técnico (University of Lisbon) and a researcher at the Centre for Management Studies of Instituto Superior Técnico (CEG-IST) and at the Institute of Biomedical Science of IST. She is the coordinator of the redeSAÚDE of the University of Lisbon, as well as coordinates the PhD Engineering and Management programme of IST, the Decision Science and Engineering group of CEG-IST and the Clinical Engineering specialization of the MSc Biomedical Engineering at IST. Her research interests include the development of management science models to assist policy and decision makers in health and clinical settings, with a special interest in multi-criteria value modelling using participatory processes. She has enhanced and applied management science techniques in multiple public and private organizations. She has published her research in Operations Research, Management Science, and Health Economics, Policy and Management international journals. She has been active in participating in international health projects, and has been involved in advisory boards from the Portuguese Ministry of Health. She has a Licenciatura in Economics from the University of Porto and a MSc and a PhD in Operational Research by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Registration You can register here for the upcoming seminar on April 30th 2024.
May 28th, 16:00-17:00 CEST - Prof. Dionne Aleman (University of Toronto, CAnada) - Pandemic planning from A (agent-based simulation) to V (vaccine prioritization)
Title Pandemic planning from A (agent-based simulation) to V (vaccine prioritization)
Abstract The abstract will follow soon.
Bio Dionne Aleman is the Associate Dean of Cross-Disciplinary Programs in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto, and is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering. She holds appointments in the UofT Institute for Health Policy, Management & Evaluation, the Institute for Pandemics, T-CAIREM, and more. She is also a co-Director of the International Centre for Translational Digital Health. Dr. Aleman’s research focuses on the application of operations research - optimization, simulation, machine learning, and graph theory - to healthcare systems to improve the quality, timeliness, and efficiency of care. She is also the faculty co-Chair of Engineering Positive Space and the Dean’s Advisor on LGBTQ2S+ Initiatives.
Registration You can register here for the upcoming seminar on May 28th 2024.
June 25th, 16:00-17:00 CEST - Dr. Derya Demirtas (University of TWente, NL) - Unlocking the Value of Extensive Data: Estimating spatial cardiac arrest risk to guide resource allocation decisions
Title Unlocking the Value of Extensive Data: Estimating spatial cardiac arrest risk to guide resource allocation decisions
Abstract Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a significant public health problem with notably low survival rates. Early defibrillation is crucial for survival, highlighting the importance of nearby automated external defibrillators (AEDs). Current AED placement strategies often rely on historical OHCA data, which are limited in availability. Publicly available demographic/socioeconomic data are often easily available and shown to have correlations with OHCA risk. This study aims to 1) estimate spatial cardiac arrest risk using demographic/socioeconomic data alone 2) compare AED location models based solely on estimated risk with those incorporating historical OHCA data to inform demand. Machine learning techniques were applied to a comprehensive dataset spanning multiple municipalities. Predicted OHCA incidence of each district were used to optimize AED locations, alongside AED optimization models that used smoothed out historical cardiac arrest data as demand. Results on several municipalities underscore the value of an OHCA registry. Nonetheless, in its absence, machine learning models leveraging demographic and socioeconomic data offer a viable means to substantially enhance coverage.
Bio Derya Demirtas is an associate professor at the Center for Healthcare Operations Improvement & Research (CHOIR) and the Section Industrial Engineering and Business Information Systems at the University of Twente. Her research focuses on operations research, optimization, data science, location theory and their applications to healthcare and emergency response. She holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the Univ. of Toronto and MMath from the Combinatorics & Optimization, Univ. of Waterloo. She received her BSc in Industrial Engineering with a double major in Computer Engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey.
Dr. Demirtas is a recipient of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) Veni talent grant, Top Sector Life Sciences & Health PPP Grant, and American Heart Association Young Investigator Award. Her research has been published in journals such as Management Science, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and Health Care Management Science. She serves in several academic roles including co-chair of NWO Advisory Roundtable (Behaviour, Education & Economics), chair of UT Examination Board Management Sciences, associate editor for Health Care Management Science and area editor for Health Systems journals.
Registration You can register here for the upcoming seminar on June 25th 2024.
Seminar archive
Recordings of our previous seminar talks are available below.
- March 19th 2024: Dr. Ana María Anaya-Arenas, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. The Biomedical Sample Transportation Problem: routing commodities with very short lifespan. The recording of the talk will be uploaded soon.
- February 27th 2024: Prof. Christine Currie, University of Southampton, UK. A Generalisable Digital Twin Simulation Model of an Emergency Department. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- January 30th 2024: Prof. Vedat Verter, Queens University, Canada. Nurse Workload Balancing Using Real-Time Location Data. The recording of the talk can be requested via email.
- November 28th 2023: Dr. Melanie Reuter, University of Twente, NL. SPELL: Supporting emergency services with OR- and AI-based approaches.
- October 17th 2023: Prof. Nadia Lahrichi, Polytechnique Montreal, Canada. Integrating bed use and patient selection to the master surgical planning in the OR. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- September 26th 2023: Prof.Em. Warren Powell, Princeton University, USA. A Universal Framework for Sequential Decision Problems in Health Applications. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- June 27th 2023: Dr. Ana Viana, Polytechnic of Porto, Portugal. Kidney Exchange Programmes: a guided tour from 2004 to 2023. The recording of the talk can be found here, and the corresponding slides here.
- May 30th 2023: Prof. Brian Denton, University of Michigan, MI, USA. Predictive and Prescriptive Models for Early Detection of Prostate Cancer. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- April 25th 2023: Dr. Gréanne Leeftink, University of Twente, NL. Capacity sharing in neonatal care networks. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- March 28th 2023: Prof. Lerzan Örmeci, Koç University, Turkey. Appointment Scheduling with Patient Preferences. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- February 28th 2023: Prof. Jens Brunner, University of Augsburg, Germany. Resident scheduling in teaching hospitals with the use of quantitative methods. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- January 31st 2023: Prof. Retsef Levi, MIT, USA. Analytics Driven Innovation in Health Systems. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- December 6th 2022: Prof. Richard Boucherie, University of Twente, NL. Dynamic assignment of capacity and fair balancing of COVID-19 patients over hospitals. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- November 11th 2022: Prof. Margaret Brandeau, Stanford University, USA. Replacing Complex Models for Health Decision Making with Metamodels: Three Examples. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- October 4th 2022 (joint seminar with WORMS): Prof. Sonya Crowe and Dr. Zella King, University College London, UK. Using OR to make real-time aggregated predictions of hospital admission for emergency patients. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- June 28th 2022: Prof. Paul Harper and Michalis Panayides, Cardiff University, UK. Modelling Healthcare Behaviours: A Game Theoretic Model Between Emergency Departments and Emergency Medical Services Queueing Systems. The recording of the talk can be found here.
- May 31st 2022: Prof. Stefan Nickel, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. Health Care Logistics in EMS: A real world case combining Analytics, Simulation and Optimization. The recording of the talk can be found here.
Organizing committee
The ORAHS international seminar series is organized by Amin Asadi, Aleida Braaksma, Derya Demirtas, Daniela Guericke, Gréanne Leeftink, Janusz Meylahn, Sebastian Rachuba, and Anne Zander of the CHOIR research center of the University of Twente (The Netherlands). For questions and inquiries feel free to reach out to us via email.
The ORAHS international seminar series is supported by its advisory board, consisting of the following members: Roberto Aringhieri (University of Torino, Italy), Richard Boucherie (University of Twente, The Netherlands), and Erwin Hans (University of Twente, the Netherlands), and Melanie Reuter-Oppermann.