Operating room scheduling under the uncertainty of surgical duration

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K13952
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 25010:Social systems engineering-related
• Research Institution: Kobe University (2022); Tokyo University of Science (2018-2021)
• Principal Investigator: ITO Mari 神戸大学, 数理・データサイエンスセンター, 特命准教授 (20778211)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: スケジューリング / 確率計画

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The study proposed a stochastic programming model for scheduling operating rooms using the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) as a criterion. The CVaR expresses the risk-aversion of the manager towards the risk that the surgical duration estimated by the surgeon could be significantly delayed. We evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed model based on numerical experiments in which we compared the schedules by the CVaR and the expected value of delay in the objective function to the schedules by the expected value without CVaR in the objective function. Since there is a trade-off between the CVaR and expected value, the manager's policy has a major impact on operating room operation. To avoid the risk of delayed surgery, the manager orders surgeries from small to big variances of duration.

Free Research Field

オペレーションズ・リサーチ

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

病院の収支の半数を占める手術室の管理は安定的な経営を維持するために重要である．本研究で提案した手術室のスケジューリングモデルは手術室の管理向上に貢献できる．また数値分析から得られた知見は，スケジュール作成時に容易に考慮することが可能であり，実用的である．本モデルの見解は手術室のスケジューリングに限らず，不確実性を伴うスケジューリング問題においての基となる．