A Simulation Decision Support System for the Healthcare Emergency Department Optimization

Abstract

Agent-based modeling and simulation methods have demonstrated efficiency in modeling and analyzing the dynamics of the healthcare systems. Simulation has become a crucial tool that facilitates understanding these systems that involve different and heterogeneous components interacting in diverse and complex ways. However, during the dynamic evolutions of these societies, the agents involve a massive amount of data that contain non-explicit and unknown information. The analysis of these data to study and discover the hidden relationships and the emerging phenomena is a well-known difficulty in the simulation systems. The call for powerful tools such as the data mining techniques to support the simulations analysis is the best solution that can be used to tackle this issue. The aim of this chapter is to develop a decision support system based on the integration of simulation systems and knowledge extraction techniques, to design a decisive tool to help healthcare managers to improve the quality and the effectiveness of care provided to the emergency departments.