Nurse Scheduling Using Harmony Search

In this research an adaption of Harmony Search Algorithm (HSA) for Nurse Scheduling Problem (NSP) is presented. Nurse scheduling problem is a task of assigning shifts to nurses for the duties that have to carry out. The difficulty of handling this problem is due to the high number of constraints to be satisfied. Thus, we are proposing an adaptation of HSA i.e. a new population-based metaheuristic algorithm that mimics the musical improvisation process which has been successfully applied for wide range of optimisation problems. The performance of HAS is evaluated using datasets established by International Nurse Rostering Competition 2010 (INRC2010). The results obtained were compared with the best results reported in the competition. The results show that the proposed method can compete well in comparison with those reported results.