Operating theatre represents one of the most critical and expensive hospital resources since a high percentage of the hospital admissions is due to surgical interventions. The main objectives are to guarantee the optimal utilization of medical resources, the delivery of surgery at the right time, the maximisation of profitability (i.e., patient flow) without incurring additional costs or excessive patient waiting time. The operating theatre management is a process very complex: the use of mathematical and simulation models, and quantitative techniques plays, thus a crucial role. The main aim of this paper is to provide a structured literature review on how Operational Research can be applied to the surgical planning and scheduling processes. A particular attention is on the published papers that present the most interesting mathematical (optimization and simulation) models and solution approaches developed to address the problems arising in operating theatres. Directions for future researches are also highlighted.

The efficient radiotherapy patient scheduling, within oncology departments, plays a crucial role in order to ensure the delivery of the right treatment at the right time. In this context, generating a high quality solution is a challenging task, since different goals (i.e., all the activities are scheduled as soon as possible, the patient waiting time is minimized, the device utilization is maximized) could be achieved and a large set of constraints (i.e., every device can be used by only one patient at time, the treatments have to be performed in an exact time order) should be taken into account. We propose novel optimization models dealing with the efficient outpatient scheduling within a radiotherapy department defined in such a way to represent different real-life situations. The effectiveness of the proposed models is evaluated on randomly generated problems and on a real case situation. The results are very encouraging since the developed optimization models allow to overcome the performance of human experts (i.e., the number of patients that begin the radiotherapy treatment is maximized).

Week Hospital is an innovative inpatient health care organization and management, by which hospital stay services are planned in advance and delivered on week-time basis to elective patients. In this context, a strategic decision is the optimal clinical management of patients, and, in particular, devising efficient and effective admission and scheduling procedures, by tackling different requirements such as beds' availability, diagnostic resources, and treatment capabilities. The main aim is to maximize the patient flow, by ensuring the delivery of all clinical services during the week. In this paper, the optimal management of Week Hospital patients is considered. We have developed and validated an innovative integer programming model, based on clinical resources allocation and beds utilization. In particular, the model aims at scheduling Week Hospital patients' admission/discharge, possibly reducing the length of stay on the basis of an available timetable of clinical services. The performance of the model has been evaluated, in terms of efficiency and robustness, by considering real data coming from a Week Hospital Rheumatology Division. The experimental results have been satisfactory and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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Food traceability, in addition to being a precise regulatory provision, is becoming increasingly significant in the variegated world of the trade globalization. Data and information on producer and territorial manufacturing context, reported on each product label, are not sufficient to reassure consumer on authenticity and safe of the product. In fact, after the food scandals of recent years, consumer has become considerably more demanding and wary. Fraud prevention, regulatory compliance, response speed in the event of sanitary emergency are among the most recognized advantages of a traceability system [1]. However, in this context, additional features can be considered: a well-implemented traceability system can give an amount of information about the product, such as to considerably enrich its perceived value by consumer. This increases the brand awareness and has very positive effects on sales. Referring to the most recent Coop Report, which is the study annually carried out by Coop Italia to analyse the distribution market, it is evident that the choice to propose products, healthy, organic, with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), allows companies to gain a significant competitive advantage. In particular, the study shows that the food products market is converging towards a clear diversification In recent decades, numerous regulations about food traceability have been promulgated, in order to protect health and safety of final consumer and to prevent fraudulent behaviour. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework for tracking and tracing an extra-virgin olive oil supply chain, located in Calabria, in the South Italy. Starting from the results of a market survey, we propose a traceability model, which increases the perceived value of the product placed on the market, and can be easily reused by small enterprises. We outline some possible future developments, based on the blockchain technology.

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We propose for the first time local reference ultrasound values for TV in a population of 11-14-year-old school-children that should be used for monitoring IDDs and have demonstrated the beneficial effects of iodoprophylaxis in consistent with reduced goitre prevalence in children and in the young adult population studied.