In health-care area, computing based solutions are frequently sought for efficient management and operation of hospitals or independent surgeries. The overall surgery scheduling plays an important role in matching of the supply and the demand for the services of a surgery. Internal competition on resources makes a surgery scheduling challenging. A surgery scheduler must consider uncertainty in the duration of each surgery and other critical activities such as the arrival of unexpected urgent patients and cancellations on the day of surgery while efficiently managing a variety of human and technical resources. Surgery schedules must balance the surgery requests and the available resources and at the same time accomplish efficient service to patients.
This thesis presents a dynamic surgery scheduling based on the idea of a Virtual Organization creation. Virtual organization (VO) is a collaboration partnership model among small businesses to share resources and to be competitive with larger businesses. Dynamic scheduling of a surgery requires the collaboration of various participant to overcome challenges of coordination. The effectiveness of a surgery schedule can be monitored from the surgeries. Moreover, the inadequacies of the schedule can be detected beforehand and the necessary measures can be taken to avoid waste of resources and cancellation of surgeries due to overbooking.
The VO based model is more rigorous than is usually presented in research literature. In this thesis a conceptual model is designed to show the interaction of partners. The model is validated using sample populated data. The roles and dependencies among entities are described in the model that uses fact-oriented approach. Object Role Modeling (ORM) is used to show the interaction of entities and their role. And NORMA is used as a development tool. The validation using fact and sample populated data determine the validity of the conceptual model and demonstrate that the collaboration partners benefit from the coordinated surgery schedule.
