Traditional system analysis and design approaches seem insufficient to
model healthcare systems, given their complexity, the presence of
uncertainty, and scale. To overcome these difficulties a
System-of-Systems (SoS) approach is adopted. In this talk, a
methodological framework for modeling healthcare systems and devising
strategies that improve the health level of a population is presented.
The problem is formulated as a nonlinear programming model in which the
objective is to optimize the population’s health level, appropriately
defined, taking into account several constraints. Specifically, given an
amount of money to be allocated by a government, local or national,
taking into account population growth and medical facilities’
constraints, an allocation strategy is devised to various levels of the
healthcare system so that a proxy of life expectancy for a given
population is maximized. The resulting policies could improve the
sustainability of healthcare systems, and, consequently the well-being
of people and the overall sustainability of corresponding countries.