"By the end of the decade, the health care industry will realize that operations research, IT, and other advanced techniques that manufacturers have been using for 15 years to reduce the cost of making items like toys and computer chips will also improve health care delivery," said operations researcher William P. Pierskalla, the John E. Anderson Professor and former dean of the Anderson School at UCLA. "These techniques offer major cost, quality, and access improvements to the healthcare system."
The remarks are scheduled to be delivered at the annual meeting of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) on Sunday, October 24 at 11:40 AM in the Plaza Building Ballroom A of the Adams Mark Hotel in Denver.
"There's a new alignment of the stars, and these stars are embracing operations research and information technologies that can bring major cost, quality, and access improvements," he says.
Prof. Pierskalla sees the trend of greater encouragement for the use of operations research and similar techniques coming from business groups like the Business Roundtable, Leapfrog Group, and National Association of Manufacturers; governmental agencies like the National Science Foundation; non-governmental organizations like the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations; and advocates for the elderly like AARP.
Operations research, known as the "Science of Better," is the discipline of applying advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.
Mathematical modeling tools characteri
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Contact: Barry List
barry.list@informs.org
410-691-7852
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
21-Oct-2004