Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Collaborative Enterprise

 

Special Issue on: "Industrial and Systems Engineering Research for 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 in the US. Healthcare experts universally agree that focus on individuals and participation of individuals in their care is important to transform healthcare systems from reactive to preventive, 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 needs 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 and 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 US healthcare system and to the quality of life across the population.

This special issue focuses 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 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 individual-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 towards patient-centric goals.
• Information technology that supports communications among medical information systems in the clinic, at home and on 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.

Important Dates

Manuscript submission: 31 March, 2013 (extended)

Notification of results: 1 July, 2013

Final revisions: 31 August, 2013

Final paper acceptance decision: 15 September, 2013