Healthcare Analytics and Operations Engineering
Most of my research in healthcare operations domain has been focused on improving the efficiency of outpatient appointment systems (OAS). I partnered with several regional outpatient clinics across the US to collect data and focused on redesigning their appointment system to reduce patient waiting time and increase appointment accessibility. Specifically, my research seeks to understand the following key questions:
- how to eliminate clinical and environmental uncertainties associated with the outpatient scheduling system,
- what is the best strategy for online scheduling with dynamic patient calls,
- which factors affect the appointment system design, and
- how to optimally design an appointment system for a multi-stage clinic with multiple providers.
I also diversified my healthcare-related research by developing novel inventory policies for perishable life-saving products such as platelets and applying process re-engineering techniques to improve the operational efficiency of emergency departments. Some of my selected publications in this area are as follows:
- Srinivas, S., & Ravindran, A. R. (2020). Designing schedule configuration of a hybrid appointment system for a two-stage outpatient clinic with multiple servers. Health Care Management Science, 23, 360-386.
- Rajendran, S., & Srinivas, S., (2020). Hybrid ordering policies for platelet inventory management under demand uncertainty. IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, 10(2), 113-126.
- Srinivas, S., & Ravindran, A. R. (2018). Optimizing outpatient appointment system using machine learning algorithms and scheduling rules: A prescriptive analytics framework. Expert Systems with Applications, 102, 245-261.
Besides, Dr. Rajendran and I secured funding and established a Consortium for Healthcare Operations Management and Engineering Analytics at MU, which aims to improve healthcare operations and achieve affordable, high-quality health outcomes through industry-academic collaboration, research excellence, and innovative discovery.