Special Issue on: "Research Issues in Patient-Centric Healthcare Delivery"

Guest Editors:
Abe Zeid, Sagar Kamarthi and Vinod Sahney, Northeastern University, USA

Delivery of operationally and economically efficient healthcare is becoming one of the national priorities of the United States. Healthcare experts universally agree that focus on individuals and participation of individuals in their own care is important to transform healthcare systems from reactive to preventative, from clinic-centric to patient-centric, and from disease-centred to wellness-centred.

The much-talked about smart health and wellbeing programmes promote safe, effective, efficient, equitable and patient-centred health and wellness services through research and innovation. Patient-centric healthcare requires the creation of baseline data for each and every individual separately. Application of population-based specifications to a specific individual may lead to wrong diagnosis and treatment, particularly when the individual differs from the population due to various factors such as genetics, environment, socioeconomic conditions and medical history.

The Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Science Foundation have been strongly advocating the application of industrial and systems engineering tools to improve the healthcare delivery system. The application of industrial and systems engineering principles and tools to model, analyse, optimise and design patient-centric healthcare delivery systems, including services for diagnosis, treatment and care, can bring significant and lasting improvements to the United States healthcare system and the quality of life across the population.

This special issue will focus on research issues that support patient-centric healthcare delivery systems that are modular, dynamically configurable, distributed, responsive, expansive, flexible and resilient. The issue seeks research contributions that address computational, algorithmic and systemic issues related to patient-centric healthcare delivery. Research contributions from diverse communities including industrial engineering, systems engineering, management science and health services are welcome.

Subject Coverage

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

Descriptive, predictive and simulation models of patient-centric healthcare delivery
Decision support tools to make optimal patient-centered evidence-based decisions
Methods for measuring and optimising operations to improve quality and productivity of patient-centric healthcare delivery systems
Performance and economic models of delivery systems to support operations management decisions
Algorithms for stratification of patients and individuals-based clinical, biomedical and environmental data
Algorithms for discovery of knowledge from aggregated population health records and for drawing inferences based on individual or population health data
Information retrieval and data mining systems for personalised medicine
Rapid response supply chains to support personalised healthcare
Evaluation of technology and incentives toward patient-centric goals
Information technology that supports communications among medical information systems in the clinic, at home and in person
Lean concepts and practices for customised diagnosis, treatment and care
Personalised and context-aware human-computer interfaces for a variety of tasks including patient, family and caregiver access to electronic health records and personal health records
Telemedicine applications that promote patient-centric diagnosis, treatment and care and empower patients and healthy individuals to participate in their own health and treatment via customised education and visualisation of health data and knowledge

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper was not originally copyrighted and if it has been completely re-written).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page.