Ophthalmology Department

Introduction

I propose a simulation of a hospital department(ophthalmologist, as i have to wear glasses and spent some time there) using Anylogic software. I will simulate physical placement of rooms, how people move there, time needed to complete the examination and so on to get clear representation of business state(how many patients in a day? in a year? How to improve? How much money can be save with optimization?).

The result of the simulation will be a set of recommendations, e.g. if ophthalmology will need to expand, and raise prices or something else to optimize patients examination and bring business to the full potential.

Problem definition

The goal for this model is to analyze daily work of the department and determine if patients are taken care of in an optimal way. Exact time of the procedures and movement of patients and doctors will be taken into consideration. Also, exact plan of the department will be used in this model to represent real environment for times evaluation, to be correct with movement speed and calculate paths of patients and doctors. Additional rules for the model:

  1. Patient firstly goes to the waiting room. There he waits for 
     his doctor who will take care of him.
  2. Inspection will be done in one of the rooms. Doctor and a patient go to free room, if there is no room available, 
     patient waits in the waiting room until one frees. 
  3. Doctor inspects patient with ophthalmoscope which he brings with him from storage before he takes on a patient. 
  4. After procedure patient goes home and doctor goes to his room.

Method

Software

For this work I chose Anylogic software. AnyLogic is a very powerful, modern simulation software with multi-method modeling potentials and the ability to customize with Java are merely few of the many reasons this software is so functional. It's possible to do work in dynamic modeling, graphical modeling, Monte Carlo simulation, motion modeling, time integration, and much more. It is a primary supplier of element reproduction apparatuses, innovations and counseling administrations for business applications[1]. Also, it has version free for personal use or education. Not all competitors have those options. But, there are a few competitors:

  1. SimWalk and Pedestrian dynamics. While they can simulate a scenario close to mine they are too complicated and expensive for our needs. Although for bigger 
     projects it can be a viable choice.
  2. Simio is pretty similar to AnyLogic. It also has a free version and can simulate a wide array of thing, such as dynamic modeling, graphical modeling, Monte Carlo 
     simulation, 1D simulation, 3D simulation, continuous modeling, design analysis, direct manipulation, etc. Although, because of it's somewhat complicated interface 
     I chose not to use it.
  3. SIMUL8 also is a viable choice. One can draw a procedure, similar to flowchart with timings and other things and look at the results. Again, it felt really 
     unfamiliar and I decided not to use it.

All in all, taking into consideration that I already had some experience with AnyLogic and that it has a big community and perfect documentation I decided to run with it.

Modelling situation

AnyLogic is a very powerful tool. There are a lot of modelling possibilities and a lot of plugins to support creation. Also, with this software and Java, simulations can become really complicated. For this project I used Enterprise Library and Network object in particular. It's useful when physical layout matters for processes designed discrete event simulation.