Category: Presentations

IS-HEART Talk on Lean Management by Pieter Dat

On Friday, September 5th 2014, Pieter Dat will present the results of his second master thesis. Pieter has completed his first master thesis in our TU/e IS group (see previous post). Last month, he has completed his second master on Care Management, at Erasmus University Rotterdam. In his second thesis, Pieter has investigated Lean Management at the Maxima Medisch Centrum.

As usual, the IS-HEART session is organized in Paviljoen K16, from 12:30 to 13:30.

Further information:

Abstract master thesis (EUR): evidence in Lean Management (“Lean capacity planning and accessibility of healthcare services:
Development of a continuous improvement culture or application of instruments and tools”)

Research question and objective:
Lean Management is characterised by a continuous improvement culture within an organisation and has resulted in improvements of business processes in several industries. A differentiation in the theory of Lean Management can be made between an organisational and an operational perspective. Lean Management is increasingly applied in the healthcare domain. In the Máxima Medisch Centrum (MMC, Eindhoven / Veldhoven) employees working at the operational level use instruments and tools to apply Lean Management. The central scientific research question is formulated as: “How can Lean Management tools and instruments contribute to continuous process improvement in the Máxima Medisch Centrum?” This research project aimed at analysing how the use of instruments and tools leads to (the development of) continuous improvement in the organisation.

Research design and research methodologies:
The research consisted of case studies at two outpatient departments in the Máxima Medisch Centrum. Four research methodologies are applied, in a triangular approach: 1) semi-structured questionnaire, 2) data analysis of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), 3) document analysis and 4) semi-structured interviews.

Results and conclusion:
The master thesis project lead to insights in the current maturity of the application of Lean Management in the Máxima Medisch Centrum. Recommendations, regarding the applicability and prerequisites, are drawn for further development of a continuous improvement culture in the hospital.

IS-HEART Presentation by Juby Joseph Ninan

Title: Integrating simulation and enactment models: a reality check

See Agenda Item

Abstract:

As organizations grow larger and the complexity of their business processes increases, it becomes important to use information systems that can use software tools to control, coordinate, execute and monitor their processes. There are different vendors that offer such business process management software and services to automate a company’s business processes, enhance their visibility and control, and provide support for continuous improvement. Business process simulation plays an important role for analyzing processes for continuous improvement. Here simulation is used to study the dynamic behavior of processes over time, thereby showing how the performance of processes or resources can be influenced by changes in the system or environment.

Business Process Simulation is usually used to support strategic decision making in companies, where the objective is to move the organization towards achieving its long term goals. Here simulation helps to understand how a particular decision affects long term behavior of the process. However, these kinds of simulation experiments are not useful to support management or operational decision making, where short term behavior of processes is to be analyzed.

For short term simulations, we can use information readily made available from the business process management system itself, without the need for additional modeling. The BPMS will have knowledge of the process structure definition, the current state of the process instances and the history records of the process execution, all of which can be used to run short- term simulation experiments. The process structure definition will contain information about the control flow and the data flow. The current state of process instances can be used to load the initial state of the simulation model, and analyzing history records may give us simulation relevant properties such as arrival rate of instances, execution time of activities, etc.

This thesis is an attempt to explore the current simulation capabilities in the BPM Suite jBPM (whose core is a light weight, extensible workflow engine that allows execution of business processes using the BPMN 2.0 specification) and also investigate whether such short term simulation experiments can be supported by the tool.

IS-HEART talk: Improving patient engagement through Personal Health Records (by KPMG)

On April 4th, KPMG will present on PHRs. This presentation is part of the IS-HEART series.

Speaker: René Pingen

Title: Improving patient engagement through Personal Health Records

Abstract:

Investments in healthcare are focused on the short period of time that a patient meets his caregiver. How can eHealth tools such as Personal Health Records help to increase patient engagement in order to shift the focus from care to personal health? This will help improving quality of life and reduce the costs of healthcare.

Details see Agenda Item

Master Thesis Defense by Wesley (J.M.) van Renswouw on Deriving WFM support from Care Pathway Protocols

On Tuesday, 3/12/2013, Wesley van Renswouw will defend his master thesis on deriving Workflow Management Support from Care Pathway Protocols. The thesis is based on an official (governmental) care pathway from China. The thesis project has been conducted in collaboration with Philips Research and leverages industry software such as JBoss DROOLS BRMS (jBPM).

Everybody is cordially invited to attend the open session, which is scheduled from 15:00 to 16:00. Event details: see online calendar item.

We wish Wesley all the best for his presentation and defense!

IS-HEART: Presentation by Prof. Stan Finkelstein

When: 3rd Friday of November (15/11/2013), 12.30 – 13.30
Where: TU/e, Paviljoen K.10
Please confirm your attendance by sending an email to is@tue.nl
Who: Stan N. Finkelstein, MD (Senior Research Scientist,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division;
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School)

Title: Finding New Lives for Old Drugs: Ideas about using a Systematic Approach

Abstract: When drugs are approved by regulatory agencies like the European Medicines Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to enter the market, they are labeled only for specific therapeutic uses, for which detailed evidence from clinical trials established their safety and efficacy. For many of these drugs, sooner or later, some evidence emerges (or at least a good reason to believe) that they would be efficacious for other uses, often referred to as “off-label uses”. In the U.S., prescribing of medicines for off-label uses, by qualified physicians is perfectly legal, though pharmaceutical companies would be breaking the law if they advertised or promoted them for such unauthorized uses. Such off-label uses are only
occasionally the object of later clinical trials to confirm their therapeutic value.

In this seminar, I will begin by reviewing evidence from a data-based study that examined the proportion of all drug prescribing that is off-label and identified the kinds of medicines that are most often used in this fashion. Then I will share some ideas and plans for new research aimed at systematically identifying medicines whose off-label uses could be evaluated through the conduct of “pseudo-trials,” using matched patient cohorts from electronic medical record databases.

The ultimate objective is to develop convincing evidence of these additional therapeutic uses of older drugs, in order that they can be prescribed more widely, and enable more patients to benefit from them.

Speaker Bio: Stan N. Finkelstein, M.D. is a Senior Research Scientist in the the MIT Engineering Systems Division. He also serves as Associate professor of Medicine at Harvard medical School and is a member of the faculty of the Division of Clinical Informatics at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He received his Masters of Science and Bachelors of Science degrees in
Chemical Engineering from MIT in 1971, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1975.

Since 1975, he has worked actively in the field of medical technology assessment and transfer at MIT. He conducts research and teaches classes in the development and evaluation of medical practice and technology and in health economics and policy, both at MIT and Harvard Medical School.

An active consultant to U.S. and international pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device firms, as well as to health services organizations and government agencies; Dr. Finkelstein is an expert in outcomes research. His areas of specialization extend to the business-government interface related to medical technology, especially product development, clinical research design and third-party reimbursement. Dr. Finkelstein is author, editor, or contributor to several books and numerous articles on these subjects.

Dr. Finkelstein’s current research interests include analyses relating to the economics of illness and pharmaceutical treatment and to low probability, high consequence public health events. His publications include studies of cost of illness and cost-effectiveness of treatment. He is co-author of several recent articles that address the link between treatment of illness and productivity at work, and the role of advancing science and technology in changing patterns of medical treatment.

See also the general IS-HEART webpages.

IS-HEART presentation by Parvathy Meenakshy

Update: this session was originally scheduled for Dec. 20th, it was rescheduled to 17/1/2014.

Parvathy Meenakshy will soon present to the IS-HEART session participants the results of her recently defended master thesis. Parvathy has graduated as a Master of Science in Business Information Systems. Her thesis, entitled A Performance Measurement Framework for Clinical Pathways Monitoring is based on a collaboration with the cardiologists of the Catharina Hospital Eindhoven.

Thesis Goals: Develop a framework for performance measurement system for clinical pathway monitoring. The sub goals to be achieved are:

  • Develop clinical pathway indicator ontology
  • Develop a formal method to define indicators
  • Develop a performance measurement system
  • Implement a Proof of Concept of the proposed system

Get the Thesis PDF from the TU/e Library