Modeling and Artificial Intelligence
Research areas description
The Canadian Research Chair on Analytics and Logistics of Healthcare is devoted to problems where decisions related to the design of care plans and their implementation are both complex and/or interconnected. Specifically, based on data to build models to make better decisions, it focuses on improving the logistics of homecare services, specialty clinics in cancer treatment and operating room management in hospitals.
- Cancer treatment research
The main cancer treatment modalities are surgery, radiation therapy (RT) and chemotherapy (CT). The complexity of logistics processes surrounding the preparation of schedules for staff who work in cancer treatment centers is the fact that they involve extremely costly resources, sometimes synchronously. In addition, they are subject to several due dates (i.e., appointments already scheduled, maximum waiting time) and several hazards (i.e., variable preparation time for each file) and should handle unexpected events like the arrival of patients requiring urgent palliative care. The flow of operations should be controlled to ensure that treatments are prepared by the pharmacy and calendar appointments are respected.
- Homecare services research
Service care and home support relied on a budget of $5.9 billion in 2010—about 4% of public health budgets—and have continued to grow ever since. In order to control cost increases, the revenue model for the delivery of homecare is currently under review in Canada. Indeed, it is evolving from a model where agencies charge for each provided care to a model where they are paid on a fee basis for each patient. In this context, the necessary care plan and its execution in a profitable manner pose considerable challenges. This paradigm shift will likely be used in other areas of health systems in the medium-term and is part of the discussions surrounding the redesign of health systems financing.
- Hospital logistics research
Hospital logistics operations are at the heart of these complex environments where the provision of quality care requires hyper-specialized human and material resources to be coordinated in a dynamic environment. The next scientific challenges are related to the development of approaches that integrate multiple levels of decisions, uncertainty management surrounding visit times (or surgery), treatment of urgent cases and multidisciplinary coordination of resources both human and material.
Research staff
- Louis-martin Rousseau | Chairholder
- Jean-Marc Frayret | Member
- Nadia Lahrichi | Member
- Antoine Legrain | Member
News about Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in Analytics and Logistics in Healthcare (HANALOG)
Press review about Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in Analytics and Logistics in Healthcare (HANALOG)

