Decision Support System for Radiotherapy Patient Scheduling: Thai Cancer Center Case Study

Abstract

Operations research is one of the great techniques that can solve the patient scheduling problem. Thus, this paper aims to propose the mixed-integer linear programming model for scheduling radiotherapy patients based on the minimization of makespan or the maximum completion time. The goal is to schedule a list of patients under various conditions such as the limitation of radiotherapy service in each room and each period, available time of doctor, the technique for treatment, limitation of machines, chemotherapy scheduling, simulation process, radiotherapy process, time condition, etc. The real-world case study from the Thai cancer center was presented and showed how the proposed model can be used with several conditions for achieving good quality schedules. The numerical data is generated based on the real data of the case study in order to conduct a computational experiment for model analysis. The result shows that the model yield the correct assignment and operation sequence respected to all constraints. Thus, this proposed mathematical model can be further used as a smart decision support system in radiotherapy patient scheduling in cancer centers. To develop the proposed mathematical model for a smart decision support system, this paper also presented the conceptual model for developing the future decision support system. This paper will be of great significance in helping decision-makers consider the radiotherapy patient scheduling and reduce the error from the staff as well.