A hybrid simulation approach for planning health and social care services

Penny, Katherine, Bayer, Steffen and Brailsford, Sally (2022) A hybrid simulation approach for planning health and social care services. Journal of Simulation. (doi:10.1080/17477778.2022.2035275).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Discrete-event simulation (DES) has been recognised for many years as a powerful tool to support the commissioning and resourcing of health and social care services, due to its ability to capture real-world variability. However, the complex interactions between two distinct but clearly related processes, disease progression and care provision, can lead to such models being cumbersome and lacking in transparency. Representing disease progression as a series of queues and activities is not always intuitive to a non-modeller. This paper presents a novel hybrid simulation approach in which health status is modelled using statecharts, thus combining DES with agent-based simulation. This hybrid approach allows disease progression to be modelled in a more natural way, keeping the overall model structure relatively simple. The approach is illustrated by a case study that evaluates the impact of telecare services for supporting people with dementia.

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Accepted/In Press date: 23 January 2022

e-pub ahead of print date: 12 February 2022

Published date: 12 February 2022

Additional Information: Funding Information: This work originally formed part of the Care Life Cycle (CLC) Project; a five-year multidisciplinary research programme funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (2010-15, grant number EP/H021698/1). We would like to thank Dr. Eldon Spackman, who kindly provided an Excel spreadsheet version of the model used in Spackman et al. (), which allowed us to apply the transition rates within our dementia statechart. We would also like to thank the system experts who participated in interviews which informed the model design and inputs. Finally, we thank Dr. Martin Kunc for his insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords: Hybrid simulation, dementia, social care, statechart, telecare