An approximate dynamic programming approach to network-based scheduling of chemotherapy treatment sessions

Arturo Wenzel, Antoine Sauré, Alejandro Cataldo, Pablo A. Rey and César Sánchez

International Journal of Production Research, 2024, vol. 62, issue 12, 4314-4330

Abstract: A solution approach is proposed for the interday problem of assigning chemotherapy sessions at a network of treatment centres with the goal of increasing the cost-efficiency of system-wide capacity use. This network-based scheduling procedure is subject to the condition that both the first and last sessions of a patient's treatment protocol are administered at the same centre the patient is referred to by their oncologist. All intermediate sessions may be administered at other centres. It provides a systematic way of identifying effective multi-appointment scheduling policies that exploit the total capacity of a networked system, allowing patients to be treated at centres other than their home centre. The problem is modelled as a Markov decision process which is then solved approximately using techniques of approximate dynamic programming. The benefits of the approach are evaluated and compared through simulation with the existing manual scheduling procedures at two treatment centres in Santiago, Chile. The results suggest that the approach would obtain a 20% reduction in operating costs for the whole system and cut existing first-session waiting times by half. A key conclusion, however, is that a network-based scheduling procedure brings no real benefits if it is not implemented in conjunction with a proactive assignment policy like the one proposed in this paper.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00207543.2023.2259502 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:tprsxx:v:62:y:2024:i:12:p:4314-4330

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/TPRS20

DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2023.2259502

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Research is currently edited by Professor A. Dolgui

More articles in International Journal of Production Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().