Constraint logic programming for inpatient´s multiple appointments management a technology transfer from industrial job shop organizations

The organization of inpatients circulation between care units and specialized consultations, presents productive analogies with the industrial job shop organizations. Thus, some concepts, methods, and tools of production management could be effective to improve inpatients circulation and appointment management. Looking for such tools, we found that Constraint Programming languages (CPL) like Charme, especially suited for solving scheduling, planning, and optimization´s problems, could be used to develop an optimal multiple appointments management application for inpatients. We describe here the interest, the approach, the tools, and the models, of what is now an a beta-tested application called Madrigal.