Using a genetic algorithm to solve a non-linear location allocation problem for specialised children's ambulances in England and Wales
Author(s)
Kung, Enoch
Seaton, Sarah E
Ramnarayan, Padmanabhan
Pagel, Christina
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Since 1997, special paediatric intensive care retrieval teams (PICRTs) based in 11 locations across England and Wales have been used to transport sick children from district general hospitals to one of 24 paediatric intensive care units. We develop a location allocation optimisation framework to help inform decisions on the optimal number of locations for each PICRT, where those locations should be, which local hospital each location serves and how many teams should station each location. Our framework allows for stochastic journey times, differential weights for each journey leg and incorporates queuing theory by considering the time spent waiting for a PICRT to become available. We examine the average waiting time and the average time to bedside under different number of operational PICRT stations, different number of teams per station and different levels of demand. We show that consolidating the teams into fewer stations for higher availability leads to better performance.
Date Issued
2022-07-01
Date Acceptance
2021-02-01
Citation
Health Systems, 2022, 11 (3), pp.161-171
ISSN
2047-6965
Publisher
Taylor and Francis Group
Start Page
161
End Page
171
Journal / Book Title
Health Systems
Volume
11
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, orbuilt upon in any way.
Identifier
https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000641377500001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=a2bf6146997ec60c407a63945d4e92bb
Subjects
Health Care Sciences & Services
Health Policy & Services
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
OR in health services location-allocation analysis emergency medical service integer programming genetic algorithms
Science & Technology
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Date Publish Online
2021-04-18