Special session — Healthcare management and engineering systems

Health structures are increasingly facing changing health demands and economical and political pressure. Recent studies are dealing with these issues and provide promising alternatives to traditional Health Care Systems: • Home Health Care (HHC) to provide continuous and coordinated care services at the patients´ home, which is particularly efficient in aging societies; • Lean Heath Care which applies lean management principles that have been used effectively in manufacturing companies for decades, to health care delivery systems; • Health care systems planning and optimization provide optimal solutions for planning and resource allocation problems using algorithms from Operations research and artificial intelligence; • Uncertainty and Decisional support systems in Health Care to provide support for healthcare managers to help them make the best decisions when perturbations occur. The objective of this session is to discuss health care systems and new and efficient decisional and optimisation techniques to improve healthcare services. Topics: • Home Heath care; • Lean HealthCare; • Capacity planning; • Day surgery (ambulatory surgery); • Logistical supports; • Reverse logistics; • Emergency.