Operating Theatre Optimization : A Resource-Constrained Based Solving Approach

Abstract

The operating theatre is considered as the bottleneck of the hospital and as one of the most resources consuming unit. Therefore its management is of primary interest: an efficient planning allows to use as better as possible the availability of the operating theatre and reduce human and financial working costs. This paper deals with operating theatre planning optimization. We present a mathematical model combining surgeries planning and scheduling over short time horizon, and by taking into account renewable and nonrenewable resources availabilities. This model gets its inspiration from project management and especially resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). We also introduce a genetic algorithm approach to heuristically solve the problem. We base our approach on the multi-mode variation of the RCPSP to define the related crossover, mutation and selection operators allowing the global search to work effectively