CRHE Events
CRHE recognizes the importance of continuous learning within the engineering healthcare field. Although not everyone may be interested in graduate and post-graduate education, CRHE aims to facilitate the learning process for engineers and engineering graduates working within healthcare, by organizing and hosting specifically tailored seminars and workshops. Their emphasis is on sharing experiences and lessons learnt from projects, skills refreshment, new applications and techniques, opportunities to hear industry leaders, all the while creating a supportive environment, with opportunities for networking. We look forward to the upcoming scheduled events.
Click here to join the CRHE listserv and receive the CRHE newsletter and learn about upcoming events.
Upcoming events
Past events
Location - MIE Building, 5 King’s College Road, Room MC331
When - June 10, 2010, 2:00 -3pm
Supervised learning refers to the ability of a system to learn from a set of examples, represented by a set of input / output pairs. A trained system is able to provide an answer (output) to each new question (input). Supervised classification models are used in many fields of science and technology. In this talk we describe the application of generalized eigenvalue classification algorithms to biomedical problems.
Speaker: Dr. Mario R. Guarracino
Dr. Mario Guarracino is researcher at High Performance Computing and Networking Institute of the Italian National Research Council. He received a PhD in Mathematics from University of Naples (IT). His postdoctoral training from National Research Council focused on high performance scientific computing. He has taught various undergraduate courses in both computer science and mathematics. His research interests include machine learning methods for computational biology and planning and development of high performance computational components for parallel and distributed problem solving environments. He is author of publications in the field of high performance scientific computing, computational biology and machine learning
When - September 10, 2010 @ 8:30-5:00pm
Healthcare Forecasting Workshop
A ONE DAY WORKSHOP organized by the University of Toronto’s
Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering (CRHE).
Friday, September 10, 2010
8:30-5:00pm
INSTRUCTORS
Prof. Michael Carter, Ali Vahit Esensoy, Andriy Kolos, Matthew Nelson
REGISTRATION
Free to members of CRHE.
$150 to non-members
Course includes workshop manual, lunch and refreshments
Space is limited
Please register by email to crhe@mie.utoronto.ca
by September 3, 2010
For more details, please call
Patrice Lee (416) 978-5023
Who should attend
This forecasting workshop is designed to be an introduction to forecasting techniques. It will be useful to managers and data analysts working in the healthcare industry who want to gain or further refine their skill sets. It is assumed that the participants have a basic knowledge of statistics, typical hospital data and Microsoft Excel.
Why this workshop is important
By the end of the session participants will:
have gained an appreciation for the opportunities and limitations of
forecasting
have an understanding of forecasting concepts and terminology
be able to prepare data to be used in a demand forecast
have the skills to use Microsoft Excel to make demand forecasts
understand stationary, seasonal, cyclical and auto-correlated demand
be able to evaluate the validity of their forecasts
be able to determine the right forecasting methodology to use based on
the characteristics of demand
What is FORECASTING
Effectively planning and managing the delivery of a healthcare service requires a good understanding of how the demand will change in the future. With the abundance of data, healthcare delivery is a fertile ground for demand forecasting. Due to the variety in patient types and data sources, a good understanding of forecasting methodologies is key for making valuable and relevant estimates of the demand.
Topics to be covered
Demand forecasting overview
Data Analysis
Models (Regression, Time series averages & Exponential Smoothing)
Format
The workshop will be structured in five sessions which will involve a period of instruction followed by exercises done in Excel. The focus will be on working with the participants to build Excel workbooks to perform forecasts using different methodologies. Attendees will be given time to further investigate the forecasting methods and data with onsite instructors.
What you need to bring
A laptop loaded with Microsoft Excel 2007.
When - Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 8:00 - 9:00 am Pacific Time
____________________________________________________________________________________
The BC Lower Mainland Chapter and the Centre for Health Care Management (CHCM) at the University of British Columbia present:
Creating Safety in an Emergency Department
With Dr. Garth Hunte
Date: Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 8:00 - 9:00 am Pacific Time
This seminar is free to attend.
Abstract
What is safety, and how is it created in complex systems? In this session I share findings from an inquiry conducted at an inner city, tertiary care emergency department in which I explore how practitioners and staff create safety in patient care in everyday practice. I emphasize storying, resilience and practical wisdom as means to enhance patient safety, and point to operational and system implications.
About the Speaker
Garth Hunte is an emergency physician clinician scientist whose research program combines system safety and injury prevention and control. He is interested in how safety is created in complex socio-technical systems, and his recent dissertation draws on anthropological, system safety and resilience engineering concepts in an ethnographic analysis of how emergency care providers create safety for patients in everyday practice. He is currently extending this interdisciplinary work in an international collaboration to apply resilience engineering principles in the context of emergency care.
Please register to participate:
IN PERSON LIVE WEBINAR STREAMING VIDEO ARCHIVE
RSVP to attend:
Room C150, UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Vancouver, BC (map)
Join us online live during the seminar. See and hear the presenter, view their slides, and ask questions! If you are unable to participate live, request to be notified when the online video archive appears on chcm.ubc.ca.
Registration:
This event will be provided free of charge by the BC Lower Mainland Chapter and UBC CHCM.
MAINTENANCE OF CERTIFICATION
Attendance at this program entitles certified Canadian College of Health Leaders members (CHE / Fellow) to 1 Category I credits toward their maintenance of certification requirement.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Canadian College of Health Leaders
Collège canadien des leaders en santé
292, rue Somerset Street West/ouest Ottawa, ON K2P 0J6 Canada
Telephone/Téléphone : 613.235.7218 1.800.363.9056
Fax/Télécopieur : 613.235.5451
www.cchl-ccls.ca - info@cchl-ccls.ca
Location - Rehabilitation Sciences Building; 500 University Ave Room 140
When - Thursday, February 2, 2012 12:00 to 1:00 pm
Rehabilitation Rounds
Thursday, February 2, 2012
12:00 to 1:00 pm
Rehabilitation Sciences Building; 500 University Ave
Room 140
“Modeling Patient Flow and HHR Forecasting”
Michael Carter
Professor, University of Toronto
Michael Carter is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto and Director of the Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering. He received his doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo in 1980. Since 1989, his research focus has been in the area of health care resource modeling with a variety of projects in hospitals, home care, rehab, long term care, medical labs and mental health institutions. He has supervised more than 160 engineering students in over 100 projects with healthcare institutions. He currently has 16 students (7 doctoral, 5 masters and 4 undergrad) working in the area. He was the winner of the Annual Practice Prize from the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS) four times (1988, 1992, 1996 and 2009). In 2000, he received the CORS Award of Merit for lifetime contributions to Canadian Operational Research. He also received an “Excellence in Teaching” Award from the University of Toronto Student Administrative Council. He is on the editorial board for the journals “Health Care Management Science” and “Operations Research for Healthcare”. He is a member of the “Nursing Effectiveness, Utilization and Outcomes Research Unit” and a mentor in the “Health Care, Technology and Place” Program at the University of Toronto. He is on the Advisory Board for the Regenstreif Centre for Healthcare Engineering at Purdue University and an Adjunct Scientist with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto (www.ices.on.ca).
If you would like to attend by webconference, please log in as a guest at:
http://utrehab.acrobat.com/rehabrounds
For more information, please contact: pt.reception@utoronto.ca
Rehabilitation Sciences Building
500 University Avenue, 8th Flr. Toronto, ON M5G 1V7
Tel: (416) 946-8641 Fax: (416) 946-8562 www.utoronto.ca/pt
Location - Room 108, Health Sciences Building - 155 College Street @ McCaul
When - June 2, 2010 @ 5:30pm-7:30pm
We´ve complied a slate of presenters with examples of IE methods applied to healthcare projects. Come learn of what others have done and be inspired to put your knowledge into practice.
Please RSVP to crhe@mie.utoronto.ca by May 28, 2010. Space is limited to 30 attendees.
Presenters:
Rene Alvarez,
Patient Flow Redesign Specialist (St. Michael´s Hospital)
Gobi Kathirgamanathan, Analyst
Project Management Office, SIMS UHN
Angela Ko,
Project Manager ( The Joint Department of Medical Imaging, MSH, UHN, WCH)
Ivan Yuen
Quality Specialist
Hamilton Health Sciences Centre
CRHExchange is a knowledge exchange and networking event for engineers working
in the healthcare sector. Organized by the Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering, its goal is to create a casual environment for engineers to share their experiences, discuss hot topics and collectively address the challenges they are facing in the healthcare industry.
Location - MIE Building, 5 King’s College Road, Room MC331
When - Monday, November 15, 2010 @ 5:00 pm
In this talk, I will present two of our current research studies on public health care modeling. The first one is concerned with how to computationally model and predict the effectiveness of vaccine deployment strategies in controlling infectious disease spread and epidemic based on an improved compartmental model. We examine three factors related to vaccine deployment arrangements: (1) total amount of vaccine, (2) vaccine releasing time, and (3) vaccine distribution methods. Our developed infection equations for different age communities enable us to predict both within- and between-group epidemic transmission dynamics. In the second study, we first investigate wait time causal relationships between connected units in a public health care system (e.g., cardiovascular care) by means of Structure Equation Modeling. Next, we develop a series Markovian queueing network model in an attempt to examine whether and how the delay cascade (i.e., a small delay in one place resulting in delays elsewhere) accounts for such causal relationships.
Location - Room 157, Rotman School, 105 St. George St., Toronto
When - Friday, December 10, 2010 2:00 p.m.
Operations Management Seminar
Friday, December 10, 2010 2:00 p.m. Room 157, Rotman School, 105 St. George St., Toronto
"Empirical Adventures in Call Centers and Hospitals "
by
Professor Avishai Mandelbaum
William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
All students and faculty welcome
Abstract:
I shall describe examples of complex service operations for which data-based simple models have been found useful - I refer to this as Simple Models at the Service of Complex Realities. The examples cover call centers, hospitals, banks, courts and more. I view these service systems through the mathematical lenses of Queueing Science, with a bias towards Statistics.
The mathematical framework for my models is asymptotic queueing theory, where limits are taken as the number of servers increases indefinitely, in a way that maintains a delicate balance between staffing level and offered-load. Asymptotic analysis reveals an operational regime that achieves, under already moderate scale, remarkably high levels of both service quality and efficiency. This is the QED regime, discovered by Erlang and substantiated mathematically by Halfin & Whitt. (QED = Quality- & Efficiency-Driven).
The data-source for the lecture is a unique data repository from call-centers and hospitals. The data is maintained at the Technion´s SEE Laboratory (SEE = Service Enterprise Engineering; see http://ie.technion.ac.il/Labs/Serveng/). It is unique in that it is transaction-based: it details the individual operational history of all the service transactions (e.g. calls in a call center or patients in an emergency department). For example, one source of data, publicly available, is a network of 4 call centers of a U.S. bank, spanning 2.5 years and covering about 1000 agents; there are 218,047,488 telephone calls overall, out of which 41,646,142 where served by agents, while the rest were handled by answering machines. The data can be explored via SEEStat, an environment for online Exploratory Data Analysis. SEEStat is accessible at http://seeserver.iem.technion.ac.il/see-terminal/, after registration.
Location - Lassonde Mining Building, 170 College Street RM MB 101
When - Thursday, March 24, 2010 @ 5:00PM
Healthcare Systems Engineering: Past, Present, Future
Professor James Benneyan
NSF Center for Health Organizational Transformation
New England VA Engineering Resource Center, Senior Scientist
Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
Northeastern University, Boston
Abstract: Problems with our healthcare system are well-known and staggering, including poor access, inefficient and ineffective processes, equity disparities, practice variability, and patient safety issues, all at enormous costs. An estimated $2.3 trillion annually continues increasing at almost double inflation, with ~30% attributable to poor processes, error, and waste. Estimates of medical errors include 1.4 million affected patients, 98,000 deaths, and $8.8 billion annually, while avoidable readmissions and patient non-compliance cost almost $200 billion/year. The enormity of such figures prompted the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and others to advocate greater application of systems engineering over a decade ago, yet not much has changed. Industrial and systems engineering, by whatever name, in fact has a long healthcare history, recently enjoying its fourth renaissance within academia. This talk is divided roughly into thirds - discussing this history, the present healthcare and IEOR landscape, and important future directions if our field is to have more profound impact.
Profile: Dr. James Benneyan is professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Northeastern University, Executive Director of the VA New England Healthcare Engineering Partnership, Co-Director of the NSF Center for Healthcare Organizational Transformation, and founder of Northeastern University´s Quality and Productivity research laboratory. His research foci and experience span healthcare systems engineering broadly—including statistical quality and safety methods, computer simulation modeling, novel exact risk-adjusted spatial-temporal surveillance methods, probabilistic optimization, and new risk-benefit and cost-effectiveness methodologies. Benneyan has jointly published over 75 papers in these areas; received 7 teaching, service, and research awards; and taught systems, mechanical, and design engineering to ages 6 through 60. Professor Benneyan is a Vice President of the Institute for Industrial Engineers (IIE), past President of the Society for Health Systems (SHS), faculty fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), operations research faculty in Northeastern´s NSF-NSEC Center for High-Rate Nanomanufacturing, and fellow of SHS and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. Prior to joining Northeastern, Jim was Senior Systems Engineer for Harvard Community Health Plan, consultant at Productivity Sciences Incorporated, and an industrial engineer at IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation. His primary funding sources include the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes for Health (NIH), National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA), United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the U.S. Air Force Surgeon General´s Office, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Location - 5 Kings´ College Road MC 102
When - January 20, 2012, 2:10 p.m.
Real-time control of ambulances through a combination of statistics and dynamic programming
Speaker: Dr. Shane G. Henderson
Affiliation: Professor, School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University
Location: MC 102
Date and time: January 20, 2012, 2:10 p.m.
Abstract
Ambulance organizations all around the world are facing increasing call volumes, increasing traffic congestion, and shrinking budgets. To keep response times small, many are looking to employ some kind of system-status management (SSM). SSM is the practice of real-time control of the ambulance fleet, using Global Positioning System (GPS) units on the ambulances to track location, and information from the ambulance crews to track status. Available ambulances are carefully stationed to ensure coverage, while not requiring too many moves of the ambulance crews. I´ll describe my work to help make the location decisions, using a combination of statistics to model inputs, approximate dynamic programming to make stationing decisions in real time, simulation optimization to "tune" the approximate dynamic programming algorithm and bounding techniques to determine what response times might be achievable in a given city.
Joint work with: Matt Maxwell, Matt McLean, Mateo Restrepo, Brad Westgate, David Matteson, Huseyin Topaloglu, Dawn Woodard
Thanks to: The Optima Corporation, National Science Foundation
Speaker biosketch
Shane G. Henderson is a professor in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University. He has previously held positions in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan and the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Auckland. He is the current chair of the INFORMS Applied Probability Society, the simulation area editor for Operations Research, and an associate editor for both Management Science, and Stochastic Systems. His research interests include discrete-event simulation, simulation optimization, and emergency services planning. He likes cats, climbing walls, biking, soccer, Harry Potter and being a Dad.
Location - Lassonde Mining Building, Rm MB101, 170 College St., Toronto, Ontario
When - March 29, 2:10 PM - 3 PM
Neuroimaging research has revealed a plethora of findings demonstrating differences in brain structure and function in psychiatric populations from healthy individuals. However, few if any of these findings have been translated into clinically relevant diagnostic or prognostic clinical tools. Difficulties include the many sources of variability that influence brain activity and structure and the high-dimensionality of neuroimaging measurements. We will discuss recent methodological developments to remediate this situation. These include the aggregation of power across large-scale, multi-site and data-based studies and the use of machine learning classifiers to produce reliable clinical prediction at the individual level based on highly dimensional brain images. These tools will be exemplified through the clinical data, including the development of MRI-based biomarkers for diagnosis and prediction of treatment response in depression.
Speakers:
Dr. Cynthia Fu, MD, PhD
Senior Clinical Lecturer
Institute of Psychiatry
King´s College London
Dr. Fu completed her psychiatry training at University of Toronto and was Chief Resident at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She completed her PhD in neuroimaging at the Institute of Psychiatry, King´s College London, and is currently a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Mood Disorders. Her research has focused on the neural changes induced by pharmacological and psychological therapies in patients with depression. Recently, Dr Fu has pioneered translational work in the discovery of neurobiological markers for diagnosis and prediction of treatment response in depression.
Dr. Sergi Costafreda, MD, PhD
Clinical Research Fellow in Neuroinformatics
Institute of Psychiatry
King´s College London
Dr. Costafreda is a psychiatrist with a PhD in statistics and neuroimaging. His research has focused on developing analysis methods for large-scale and multi-site functional MRI studies and meta-analytic tools for neuroimaging studies. He is currently working on MRI-based diagnosis, prognosis and treatment response prediction in psychiatric disorders. Dr. Costafreda is Clinical Research Fellow in Neuroinformatics at the Institute of Psychiatry, King´s College London.
Location - University of Toronto, MB128
When - February 12, 2010, 2:10PM
Speaker: Michael W. Carter, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto
Healthcare Engineering: Quantitative Decision Support Models for the Healthcare Industry
Abstract:
Health Care is the number one industry in North America; bigger than automotive, telecommunications or steel. Estimated total spending in 2009 was $183 billion ($5,452 per person) or 10% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2009, spending in the US was around $2.46 trillion dollars US ($8,047 US per person), or 17.6% of the GDP. The US spends far more than any other country (as a percent of GDP). Health care systems all over the world are in the midst of a serious financial crisis, and the situation will likely get worse in the next few years. Demand is going up as the population ages, and costs are increasing as the drugs and technologies continue to get more complex and expensive.
Of course, it would help if there were more money available. However, I also firmly believe that the health care industry could be run a lot more efficiently. I believe that quantitative tools can help the health care industry improve quality, reduce costs, improve effectiveness and increase efficiency. The Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering includes nine faculty members and two dozen graduate students working on various aspects of health care modelling and process improvement. In this talk, I will describe a few examples, discuss opportunities, and outline where I believe that we need to go in the future.
Speaker bio:
Michael Carter is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto and Director of the Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering. He received his doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo in 1980. Since 1989, his research focus has been in the area of health care resource modeling with a variety of projects in hospitals, home care, rehab, long term care, medical labs and mental health institutions. He currently supervises seven doctoral, seven masters and six undergrad (thesis) students. He was the winner of the Annual Practice Prize from the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS) three times (1988, 1992 and 1996). In 2000, he received the CORS Award of Merit for lifetime contributions to Canadian Operational Research. He also received an “Excellence in Teaching” Award from the University of Toronto Student Administrative Council. He is on the editorial board for the “Journal of Scheduling” and the!
journal “Health Care Management Science”. He is a member of the “Nursing Effectiveness, Utilization and Outcomes Research Unit” and a mentor in the “Health Care, Technology and Place” Program at the University of Toronto. Prof. Carter is a member of the Advisory Board for the Regenstreif Centre for Healthcare Engineering at Purdue University. He is an Adjunct Scientist with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto.
Coffee and cookies will be served before the seminar.
Everyone is welcome to attend.
Visit the seminar website to download the flyer: http://www.mie.utoronto.ca/seminars
Location - Rm100, Health Sciences Building
When - December 15, 2009
CRHE presents the second CRHExchange meeting titled "Those Difficult Doctors!
Notes from the Other Side” , where two medical doctors Michael Rachlis and
Tammy Sieminowski will lead the discussion on how physicians process
information, what motivates them and why they are so difficult.
Please RSVP to crhe@mie.utoronto.ca by Friday December 11th. Space is limited to
30 attendees.
CRHExchange is a knowledge exchange and networking event for engineers working
in the healthcare sector. Organized by the Centre for Research in Healthcare
Engineering, its goal is to create a casual environment for engineers to share
their experiences, discuss hot topics and collectively address the challenges
they are facing in the healthcare industry.
Location - 155 College Street, Health Sciences Building, Room 790
When - Wednesday, December 9, 2009, 4-5pm
Presenter: Paul McNicholas, University of Guelph
Abstract : Model-based approaches to clustering (unsupervised learning) and classification (supervised classification) are growing in popularity due, in part, to ongoing advances in computing hardware. Recent work on model-based clustering is presented. Specifically, two developments are outlined: (1) a model-based clustering approach to the analysis of very large data sets; and (2) a model-based approach to the problem of clustering gene expression time course data. Approaches utilizing mixtures of multivariate Gaussian distributions and others using mixtures of multivariate t-distributions are outlined. In each case, a variant of the expectation-maximization algorithm is used for parameter estimation. Computational issues, including convergence criteria and a parallelization paradigm, are presented and generalizations to model-based classification are also given. Real bioinformatics and food authenticity data are used to illustrate these methods.
All are welcome!
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For more information regarding the Biostatistics Seminar Series, please visit http://www.phs.utoronto.ca/lou/course/chl5250/Course.asp
Location - Room MC331, Mechanical Building, 5 King’s College Road
When - Friday, 27 November 2009, 11-12pm
Waiting lines abound in health care settings, and will never go away entirely. There are, however, a handful of issues or physical principles about the management of these waiting lines that can readily be understood by the health care professionals that have to deal with them on a day to day basis. These principles are the results of the occupancy level, the variability in treatment time and patient arrival, the pooling of resources, and the introduction of priority treatment discipline. This presentation looks at each of these principles is turn. We conclude with a look at the results of Denton et al (2008) from a queueing perspective.
David Stanford has worked on the modelling of waiting lines for over a quarter of a century, with applications ranging from telecommunications to health care. He obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Carleton University in 1981, and spent five years working for Bell-Northern Research before pursuing an academic career in 1986. He is the son and brother of physicians. The common theme to his work is the use of applied probability models to study industrial and societal problems. He has worked on problems as diverse as the modelling of forest fire growth, organ transplant wait lists, bilingual call centres, and insurance fund solvency. His particular greatest current interest is in the modelling of congestion in (and knowledge transfer about queueing fundamentals related to) health care settings. Email an RSVP at your earliest convenience to crhe@mie.utoronto.ca as space may be limited.
A webcast of this event is available at:
http://mediacast.ic.utoronto.ca/20091127-MIE/index.htm
The NSERC CREATE Program in Healthcare Operations and Information Management is proud to be a sponsor of the CRHE seminar series.
Location - Terrence Donnely Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, 160 College St.
When - October, 27, 2009
CRHE presents the first CRHExchange meeting titled "Project Implementation for Healthcare Engineers: Moving from Ideas to Action!", where two experienced healthcare project administratorsNeil McEvoy and Catherine Wang will lead the discussion on how healthcare engineers can address challenges in implementing projects.
Please RSVP to crhe@mie.utoronto.ca by October 23rd. Space is limited to
30 attendees.
CRHExchange is a knowledge exchange and networking event for engineers working
in the healthcare sector. Organized by the Centre for Research in Healthcare
Engineering, its goal is to create a casual environment for engineers to share
their experiences, discuss hot topics and collectively address the challenges
they are facing in the healthcare industry.
Location - Room MC 331, MIE Building, 5 King’s College Road, Toronto, M5S3G8
When - Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 - Time : 5pm – 6pm
RIGHT (Research Into Global Healthcare Tools) is a two-year cross-institution project funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. It involves a team of researchers from Brunel University and the Universities of Cambridge, Cardiff, Southampton and Ulster. The ambitious aim of RIGHT was to try to understand why Operations Research modelling methods are not embedded in the mindset and culture of the UK National Health Service, in the way that they are in other sectors such as manufacturing or defence. After surveying the literature, a feasibility study was undertaken which included the development of a “Workbook” presenting these methods to novice users, and an online selection tool which enables the NHS problem-owner to specify the characteristics of their problem and then automatically select the most appropriate method. In addition, RIGHT have engaged in many different ways with the NHS, for example consultative workshops and exemplar projects. RIGHT began in 2007 and is now drawing to a close and currently engaged in seeking funding for Phase 2. In this talk Sally shall describe the project, its main achievements and some of the challenges they have faced, not the least of which was the delays caused by recent changes in the research ethics approval process in the UK.
Sally is Professor of Management Science in the School of Management at the University of Southampton. She obtained a BSc in Mathematics from Kings College London in 1973 and was appointed to a lectureship in the School of Management in 1998. Sally’s research is chiefly in the area of health care modelling - to evaluate treatments and screening programmes, to allocate resources, to redesign processes and to improve systems. She has worked specifically in the disease fields of HIV/AIDS, diabetes, cancer and sexually transmitted diseases, in emergency care and in healthcare information systems. She has twice won the UK OR Society´s Goodeve Medal, in 2004 for system dynamics modelling of emergency health care services in Nottingham, and in 2006 for modelling of chlamydia infection.
Email an RSVP at your earliest convenience to jennifer@mie.utoronto.ca as space may be limited.
Location - Health Sciences Building, 6th Floor Auditorium, 55 College Street, University of Toronto
When - Wednesday,18 March 2009 at 2 - 4 pm
The Hot Topics in Health Policy seminar series features leading Canadian and international researchers addressing the issues and controversies impacting health policy today.
March 18th - Improving the Evidence Base for Health Care Decision-making? presented by Sean Tunis, Founder and Director, Centre for Medical Technology Policy, San Francisco.
All seminars are free of charge and take place at the Health Sciences Building, 6th Floor Auditorium.
Next Seminar in Hot Topics in Health Policy Series will take place on Feb. 25th.
Speakers’ bios and the full schedule are available on the HPME website.
Presented by the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (HPME), University of Toronto.
Location - Galbraith Building,Room GB 202,35 St.George St.
When - November 27th, 2008 at 6.30pm to 9pm
Speaker:Beth Jewkes,Prof and Chair,Dept of Management Sciences,Faculty of Engineering,University of Waterloo.
A Queueing Model of Ambulance Offload Delays
Emergency Medical Services (EMS) refers to an “offload” time as the time taken to transfer a patient from an ambulance stretcher into an emergency department.If an emergency room department (ER) cannot accept transfer of care for an incoming patient,an “offload delay” results,and the paramedic team must stay with the patient until the ER is ready to accept care.While the ambulance is on offload delay,the EMS vehicle and its staff are unavailable to respond to emergency calls.This is a serious impediment to the provision of EMS services.Offload delays are common across Ontario,and are a growing concern to both the public and healthcare providers.The reasons for offload delays are many,most of which can be characterized by downstream congestion in patient care:ER overcrowding,a shortage of hospital beds,a lack of alternative level of care options. While the reasons for offload delays are well known,there are few analytical models available to assist decision-makers with understanding the implications of various resource allocation policies.This talk will present a queueing model,an EMS-ER system, whose results facilitate a deeper understanding of how changes in the hospital system or EMS capacity affect offload delays.
Beth Jewkes is a professor of applied operations research,and is chair of the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo.Her research interests are in stochastic models of supply chain systems.This work stems from recently initiated projects with the Region of Waterloo EMS and several of the Regional hospitals dealing with offload delay issues and ambulance deployment strategies.Her teaching interests include Discrete Event Simulation,Supply Chain Management,and Queuing Models.She is on the author team of “Engineering Economics in Canada”,soon to come out in its 4th edition.
Members $30/Non-members $40/Students $20.
RSVP:Saeed Zolfaghari zolfaghari@ryerson.ca
Location - Haultain Building (HA 411),170 College Street, Toronto
When - Thursday, 19 Feb. 2009 (9am-5pm) and Friday, 20 Feb. 2009 (9am-1pm)
Presented by Professor Michael Carter, Ms.Daphne Sniekers & Ms.Somayeh Sadat
Healthcare institutions are often bombarded with proposals aiming to improve the performance of the organization.Health System Simulation is a methodology for developing computer models of an organization´s processes.These models can incorporate many of the relevant complexities and random factors of healthcare institutions to provide a testing ground for suggested improvement. The System Simulation workshop will provide the basic concepts required to understand the purpose and capabilities of simulation models,the process of building simulation models and the application of the simulation models to test various ´what if´ scenarios.The course will introduce participants to the main technical steps of any simulation project,namely input data analysis,basic simulation structure in a simulation software package (Simul8), output data analysis and running different ´what if´ scenarios. The workshop will be an interactive and hands-on experience,working with a simulation software package. A reading guide will be supplied with various resources used in the course and a recommended reading list.
Workshop Schedule & Topics
Thursday, Feb 19th:
-Simulation from A-Z:What is involved?Demonstration through a simple health care example
-Steps to successful creation and use of simulation models in healthcare.
-Major elements of a simulation in Simul8(work entry points,work centres, queues and work exit points)
-In class construction of a simple simulation model of a health care case
-How long should you run the simulation? Setting up the right unit of time,warm up period,and simulation period.
-Input Parameters - various input formats such as determining which is best for your purposes and fitting distributions to data using Best Fit
-Output Analysis
-Verification and Validation
-´What if´ Scenario Testing
-Data challenges:What can be done?
-Group Discussion
Friday,Feb 20th
-Full analysis and decision making of a detailed simulated health care case
-Help a fictional clinic determine how to best improve patient access and care (group work)
-Demonstration of some of the more advanced features such as labels,routing, resources and visual logic
Cost: Free to members of CRHE.$250 to non-members.
Location - James Friesen/Cecil Yip Red Seminar Room, Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (CCBR), 160 College Street, Toronto, M5S 3E1
When - Thursday Feb 26th 2009 at 6pm
Presented by : Dr. Murray Côté
Performance measurement data collection has become a very important issue for primary care practices, as health plans, regulatory agencies, government purchasers, and others have increasingly required the collection and reporting of such data. Performance data reporting initiatives have great potential for improving health care delivery and rewarding and reimbursing practices through pay for performance. Based upon the available evidence, policy makers have begun encouraging the further development, local modification, and broad adoption of clinical practice guidelines in a variety of clinical areas, including diabetes care. While the literature is relatively rich with data regarding the value of implementing guidelines to improve care, very little information is available regarding the cost to primary care practices of collecting and reporting quality measures designed to both assist practice improvement efforts and to track practice compliance with the implementation of clinical guidelines.
While the collection and reporting of performance data may pose challenges for any practice to achieve, it is a particular challenge for smaller practices that may lack the necessary staffing, management, or information technology infrastructure. This project seeks to help in filling the gap in our current understanding of these issues by studying the direct and indirect costs of implementing and maintaining diabetes quality measurement data collection and reporting in small to medium-sized primary care practices.
Murray Côté, PhD, earned a B.A. in political science and an M.B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. in management science from Texas A&M University. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Colorado Denver, he was on the faculty at the University of Florida and Trinity University, San Antonio.
Professor Côté’s primary research interests are in health care operations, including patient flow, capacity planning and management, demand forecasting, and nurse staffing and scheduling. His research findings have been published in Decision Sciences, the European Journal of Operational Research, Health Care Management Science, and Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, among others. In addition, his research has received awards from the Decision Sciences Institute and the Healthcare Financial Management Association.
Professor Côté has obtained extramural funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Outcomes Research Center and the Education and Research Foundation of APICS. He has also consulted for a variety of health care organizations including CIGNA, the Texas Transplant Institute at Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital, and Shands Jacksonville. Professor Côté is currently an investigator for two Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services-funded projects examining how to evaluate the quality of care provided in nursing homes based upon survey deficiencies and staffing levels.
Professor Côté is a member of the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI), the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), and the American Society for Quality (ASQ). He was a past president of the Health Applications Section of INFORMS and is an ASQ-certified quality manager.
Followed by a cheese and wine reception, we look forward to seeing you at this event. Please email an RSVP at your earliest convenience to jennifer@mie.utoronto.ca as space may be limited.
Location - MB 101, Mining Building, 170 College St., Toronto
When - Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 11am-12.30pm
Presented by Dr. Les Vertesi
The activity of waiting for care is not as simple as it seems. Analysis of surgical waitlists in BC reveals that the causes of public frustration are more than just the length of the wait. The modeling work done by the IRMACS team will be highlighted. It began as a way to simply predict the number of cases needed to meet a wait time threshold, but has grown into a means of shedding light on the underlying processes. The elimination of waitlists in Canada poses more of a challenge than most people realize.
Location - Room 1105, Sandford Fleming Building, 10 Kings College Rd, Toronto
When - Thursday, 13 November 2009 at 5 pm
Les Vertesi, a career physician with over 30 years experience in major trauma referral hospitals will present this talk.
Best known as the founder of the Advanced Life Support paramedic ambulance program of the BC Ambulance service (1975-1985), he was also the founding chairman of the Canadian Medical Association’s accreditation committee on Accreditation of EMS training. In addition to his specialty certificate in Emergency Medicine, he earned a Master’s Degree in Health Sciences and Clinical Epidemiology in 1989 from UBC where his interest in simulation and modeling began. This lecture will look at Hospital bed modeling and why there has been remarkably little success breaking through the barrier from theoretical research into practical applications that actually change health policy. BC’s Ministry of Health has recently accepted the MACH-1 discrete-event model (Model of Acute Care in Hospitals – version 1) developed by the Complex Systems Modeling Group at the IRMACS Institute of Simon Fraser University and has decided to use it as the basis for their new hospital bed allocation policy. Success required the development and inclusion of at least two concepts new to health modeling before the necessary validity could be achieved. This session will describe that journey and how it is affecting the way hospital data will be collected in the future.
Location - Room MB 101, Mining Building, 170 College Street, Toronto
When - Wednesday, November 5th 2008 at 10am – 12pm
Full Title : ‘System dynamics modelling of Chlamydia infection for screening intervention planning and cost benefit estimation.’
Presented by Sally Brailsford, University of Southampton,U.K.
Beginning with a brief overview of the history of OR modelling in the UK´s National Health Service, this talk describes an application of modelling for Chlamydia, a sexually transmitted infection which is greatly on the increase in the UK. Chlamydia trachomatis is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the UK. It is asymptomatic and easily treated with antibiotics, but re-infection is possible, and it can have long term complications such as pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility. In this study, a System Dynamics model was developed to evaluate the costs and benefits of various interventions, and geomapping was used with the data from a screening trial in Portsmouth to plot Chlamydia "hot-spots". Finally, socio-economic data was analysed to identify and target areas
for screening and treatment.
Sally is Professor of Management Science in the School of Management at the University of Southampton. She obtained a BSc in Mathematics from Kings College London in 1973, but spent most of her early working life as a nurse, before returning to academia in 1988 to undertake a Masters in Operational Research at the University of Southampton, followed by a doctorate on the topic of simulation modelling for HIV and AIDS. She then worked for several years as a Research Fellow in Operational Research in the School of Mathematics, before being appointed to a lectureship in the School of Management in 1998.
Location - Metro Toronto Convention Centre - North Building
When - 3,4&5 November 2008
If you play an important role in health care, this show is a ´must attend´ for you. See the latest in technology, listen to some of the most dynamic leaders in our industry and participate in sessions covering many of the issues facing health care today.
Many of the delegates who attend HealthAchieve are the hardest to reach professionals in the health care industry: Hospital and Health Care Associations CEOs, Board Chairs, Trustees, Senior Management, financial and information technology decision makers. And with so many exhibitors attending year after year, it´s clear that participation is a good investment.
For Registration Enquiries please call 416 205-1361 or 416 205-1362, Fax (905) 812-0206, 1-877-969-9092
E-mail: healthachieve@oha.com or visit www.healthachieve.com
Location - R.D. Venter Conference Room (MB 101) Mechanical Engineering Building,5 Kings College Rd.
When - Friday October 24 2008 at 10:10am
Presented by Claire Davies,Ph.D., P.Eng. - University of Aukland.
Individuals with functional blindness must often utilise assistive aids to enable them to complete tasks of daily living. One of these tasks, locomotion, poses considerable risk. The long white cane is often used to perform haptic exploration, but cannot detect obstacles that are not ground-based. Although devices have been developed to provide information above waist height, these do not provide auditory interfaces that are easy to learn. Development of such devices should adapt to the user, not require adaptation by the user. Can obstacle avoidance be achieved through direct perception? This research presents an auditory interface that has been designed with the user as the primary focus. An ecological interface design approach has been taken into account resulting in an interface that audifies ultrasound. Audification provides intuitive information to the user to enable perceptive response to environmental obstacles. A device was developed that provides Doppler shift signals that are audible as a result of intentional aliasing. This system provides acoustic flow that is evident upon initiation of travel and has been shown to be effective in perceiving apertures and avoiding environmental obstacles. The orientation of receivers on this device was also examined, resulting in better distance perception and centreline accuracy when oriented outward as compared to forward. The design of this novel user interface for visually impaired individuals has also provided a tool that can be used to evaluate direct perception and acoustic flow in a manner that has never been studied before.
Location - 2075 Bayview Avenue, McLaughlin Auditorium, EG 18a
When - Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
Health services research brings together staff, clinicians, managers, economists, epidemiologists, engineers and many others from across the spectrum of healthcare. It uses a wide range of research methods to examine the organization, management, financing and outcomes of health care delivery. Its areas of study are very broad and can include anything from the study of inter-professional communication and teamwork, to the study of quality and patient safety, and to the study of policy and healthcare governance. This research day is an opportunity to learn, share and discuss about health services sciences at Sunnybrook and communicate your interests and innovative ideas or findings to a broader audience including other clinicians, researchers and management.
- Keynote address by Maureen O’Neill, CEO of the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation
- Innovative methodology lessons from local experts
- A poster abstract competition
- Interactive poster session for networking with other researchers
- The launch of the Centre for Health Services Sciences at Sunnybrook
Location - University of Toronto
When - July 28 - August 1, 2008
ORAHS 2008 will be held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from July 28 to August 1, 2008. This will be the first time in ORAHS history that the annual meeting venue is in North America. Appropriately, the theme is International Perspectives on Operations Research and Health Care. This conference will be a great opportunity to share ideas with fellow health care operation researchers from North America, Europe and the world.
Location - University of Toronto, Fields Institute
When - July 24-25, 2008
ORAHS PhD workshops will be taking place at the University of Toronto on July 24/25, 2008 as a part of the ORAHS Annual Conference. The goal of this event is to provide an intimate forum for current and recently graduated PhD students to showcase and discuss their research. The workshop is composed of tutorials and seminars focusing on operational research and healthcare topics ran by prominent researchers in these fields. There will be financial support available for students attending this event.
Location - University of Toronto, GB202
When - January 28th, 2008 at 5pm-7pm
On January 28, 2008, a collaborative effort to improve Canada´s healthcare system was launched by professors, researchers, graduate students and a wide variety of industry leaders in today´s healthcare labour market.