Ambulance Logistics

Ambulatory care is an essential part of our health care system. This system faces major challenges, especially with respect to demographic changes, centralization of health care facilities as well as a combination of dwindling resources and increasing costs. In the current Covid-19 situation, the challenges become even more virulent. Here, we focus on the development of decision-supporting systems for improving ambulance logistics. In scheduling plannable transports together with ad-hoc requests that cannot be shifted, we need to address real-time requirements without knowledge about future requests. Depending on the future development of infection scenarios, ambulance logistics needs to be adapted. We develop globally optimum solutions that are protected against uncertainties. For the purpose of evaluating the established models and algorithms, a complex simulation environment is developed that allows the evaluation of the proposed models and solution approaches.

This work is developed within the joint project HealthFaCT funded by the BMBF. The project partners are FAU, RWTH, TU Kaiserslautern, and Fraunhofer ITWM. In the project, next to ambulance logistics, we also study location problems for emergency doctors and pharmacies as well as mergency services for pharmacies, as well under Covid-19 requirements.

Link to project webpage: https://en.www.math.fau.de/edom/projects-edom/analytics/optimization-of-medical-care-in-rural-environments/

Frauke Liers