Predicting Urban Medical Services Demand in China: An Improved Grey Markov Chain Model by Taylor Approximation

Jinli Duan, Feng Jiao, Qishan Zhang and Zhibin Lin
Additional contact information
Jinli Duan: College of Pharmacy, Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 1 Qiuyang Road, Fuzhou 350122, Fujian, China
Feng Jiao: Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle University, 5 Barrack Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4SE, UK
Qishan Zhang: School of Economics and Management, Fuzhou University, No. 2 Xueyuan Road, Fuzhou 350108, Fujian, China
Zhibin Lin: Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-12

Abstract: The sharp increase of the aging population has raised the pressure on the current limited medical resources in China. To better allocate resources, a more accurate prediction on medical service demand is very urgently needed. This study aims to improve the prediction on medical services demand in China. To achieve this aim, the study combines Taylor Approximation into the Grey Markov Chain model, and develops a new model named Taylor-Markov Chain GM (1,1) (T-MCGM (1,1)). The new model has been tested by adopting the historical data, which includes the medical service on treatment of diabetes, heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease from 1997 to 2015 in China. The model provides a predication on medical service demand of these three types of disease up to 2022. The results reveal an enormous growth of urban medical service demand in the future. The findings provide practical implications for the Health Administrative Department to allocate medical resources, and help hospitals to manage investments on medical facilities.

Keywords: medical services demand; Grey Markov chain; Taylor Approximation; prediction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/8/883/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/8/883/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:8:p:883-:d:107194

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().