A Modeling and Simulation Framework for Health Care Systems

In this paper, we propose a new modeling methodology named MedPRO for addressing organization problems of health care systems. It is based on a metamodel with three different views: process view (care pathways of patients), resource view (activities of relevant resources), and organization view (dependence and organization of resources). The resulting metamodel can be instantiated for a specific health care system and be converted into an executable model for simulation by means of a special class of Petri nets (PNs), called Health Care Petri Nets (HCPNs). HCPN models also serve as a basis for short-term planning and scheduling of health care activities. As a result, the MedPRO methodology leads to a fast-prototyping tool for easy and rigorous modeling and simulation of health care systems. A case study is presented to show the benefits of the MedPRO methodology.