KESS2 East PhD in Mathematics: Whole-systems simulation modelling to support clinical futures

Note - Applicants for these awards must have a home or work address in the East area of Wales at the time of their application for funding and enrolment.

This KESS2 East Wales PhD focuses on supporting Aneurin Bevan University Health Board’s (ABUHB) Clinical Futures Strategy.

This strategy sets out how the Health Board are moving to a better balance of care by:

-delivering most care close to home
-creating a network of local hospitals providing routine diagnostic and treatment services
-centralising specialist and critical care services in a purpose build Specialist and Critical Care Centre.

You will support ABUHB and the Clinical Futures team by producing state-of-the-art decision support tools to allow ABUHB to align capacity to best match demand in an effective and efficient manner across the proposed new network of hospitals. This will require the use of simulation and optimisation modelling of care pathways across the whole system.

The project will consist of five integrated work packages (WPs):

-Data collection and analysis: familiarisation with related ABUHB datasets from ABUHB and employing data mining tools.
-Care pathway mapping: to develop a comprehensive mapping of both current and proposed patient pathways across ABUHB and the new hospital. This will involve extensive stakeholder participation and mapping exercises, coupled with pathway mining tools and analysis of data.
-Whole-systems simulation modelling: development of a comprehensive simulation tool to capture patient pathways, focussing on capacities and processes, waiting times, and resource needs.
-Visualisation: Identification and incorporation of relevant quality improvement techniques such as run charts and displayed using visualisation technique (dashboards, etc).
-Scenario modelling: the developed tool and algorithms will be tested for multiple scenarios in conjunction with clinicians and mangers to suggest the optimal configuration (pathways) and associated resource needs for the new hospital and regional healthcare network.