Core Project Areas

Our identified long-term research thrusts focus on 6 core application areas:

  1. Safety and process quality (including reliability, provider and patient adherence, statistical methods, and robust healthcare process design),
  2. Logistics (including scheduling, location, and inventory, information, patient, and risk/safety supply chains)
  3. Flow and access (including patient, information, and resource flow and new service system flow modeling methods)
  4. Efficiency and costs (including best practice identification and transfer)
  5. System-wide optimization (at meso, macro, and meta/national levels), and
  6. Outcomes/effectiveness optimization (including treatment optimization, medical decision making, and comparative effectiveness methods).

In addition to the above core application areas, the PI and his research lab are nationally known for their methods research in several fundamental areas:

  1. coresStatistical methods for quality, patient safety, and risk-benefit analysis;
  2. Data envelopment analysis models to identify best healthcare practices;
  3. Network-wide models for optimizing care processes for traumatic brain injury (TBI);
  4. Effectiveness and improvement readiness assessment methods; and
  5. Informatics and data mining/extraction.

This work has been supported by 11 NSF, AHPQ, NIH, and industry grants and produced seminal papers in several statistical methods to accelerate process improvement – including methods for rare events, risk-adjusted outcomes, evidence base compliance, and novel comparative effectiveness methods. We also have worked closely with the National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and Department of Defense to develop healthcare systems engineering research agendas.