Creating impact with operations research in health: making room for practice in academia

Abstract

Operations research (OR)-based analyses have the potential to improve decision making for many important, real-world health care problems. However, junior scholars often avoid working on practical applications in health because promotion and tenure processes tend to value theoretical studies more highly than applied studies. This paper discusses the author's experiences in using OR to inform and influence decisions in health and provides a blueprint for junior researchers who wish to find success by taking a similar path. This involves selecting good problems to study, forming productive collaborations with domain experts, developing appropriate models, identifying the most salient results from an analysis, and effectively disseminating findings to decision makers. The paper then suggests how journals, funding agencies, and senior academics can encourage such work by taking a broader and more informed view of the potential role and contributions of OR to solving health care problems. Making room in academia for the application of OR in health follows in the tradition begun by the founders of operations research: to work on important real-world problems where operations research can contribute to better decision making.

Multi-disciplinary planning in health care: a review

“…To create impact with research results in a health care environment, attention should be paid to the dissemination of both the theoretical as well as the practical results (Brandeau, 2016 ).…”

Praxis in healthcare OR: An empirical behavioural OR study

“…Focusing more specifically on improving facilitative simulation projects in healthcare, Tako and Kotiadis (2015) present a framework that combines soft systems methodology with simulation in order to incorporate stakeholder involvement in the project life-cycle. In contrast, and in a rare example in which the OR practitioner is the analytical unit rather than the OR project, Brandeau (2016) draws on her experience as an academic operational researcher to propose a blueprint for junior academics seeking to inform and influence decisions in health.…”

Optimization Models for HIV/AIDS Resource Allocation: A Systematic Review

“…16,[19][20][21] Using deterministic and stochastic mathematical epidemic models, researchers have attempted to estimate the collective impact of various HIV/AIDS interventions across different settings, [22][23][24] and although disease transmission models provide important insights on HIV transmission, they are often not oriented toward decision making and fall short of informing resource allocation between and among various interventions. 16,22,25 Thus, some analysts have built in optimization programs that determine the optimal allocation of a fixed budget across multiple intervention programs. [26][27][28] Optimization-widely used in operations research and management science-uses mathematical techniques to achieve an optimal objective by making decisions (ie, allocation of resources) under constraints.…”