Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information technology to provide healthcare from ax000D
distance. The virtual interaction between the patient and the healthcare expert can be either pre-recorded orx000D
done in real-time. In this interaction, a healthcare expert offers advice on whether it is better for the patient tox000D
treat his/her symptoms, wait to see his/her regular doctor, go to a clinic, or go to an emergency room. In thisx000D
project, we collaborate with Dialogue, a Montreal-based start-up that provides progressive and affordablex000D
healthcare, accessible on mobile, for Canadian companies. Dialogue employs different types of healthcarex000D
experts. Although employees work from 8am to 8pm from Monday to Friday, patients can log into the app atx000D
any time of the day. Dialogue currently dimensions and schedules the workforce by estimating ratios: numberx000D
of chats a nurse can serve per hour/number of patients arriving to the system, number of assistants/number ofx000D
nurses. Moreover, the estimate of the number of chats that a healthcare expert can serve per time period doesx000D
not include the level of seniority and the experience of the employee. This planning method often results in thex000D
inability to hire an appropriate number of healthcare experts, in a decrease in the service level (i.e. patientsx000D
usually wait a long time before being served), and in the over-utilization of nurses as they are usually allocatedx000D
to overtime and they are assigned to more patients than they can handle. The objective of this project isx000D
therefore to provide Dialogue with a decision-support tool to staff dimensioning and scheduling. This involvesx000D
several challenges from the modeling and solution perspectives. We face complex work regulations, demandx000D
variability and uncertainty and the length of the planning horizon. In order to address these challenges, wex000D
propose to use a two-stage stochastic programming model. This model will include uncertainty in demands tox000D
provide robust staffing and scheduling decisions that will react, in a better way, to changes in patients'x000D
requirements. We believe that the implementation of such a project will contribute to reducing patients' waitx000D
time and improving satisfaction. This should also relieve congestion in clinics and hospitals.