BUBBLES: Real Time Home Care Scheduling tool limiting (COVID-19) Infection Chains

BUBBLES：实时家庭护理安排工具限制 (COVID-19) 感染链

• 批准号: 78156
• 金额: $ 38.65万
• 依托单位: NPCOMPLETE LTD
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=78156
• 关键词: BUBBLES; Real; Time; Home; Care

Home healthcare and home care are expected to see increased demand, as more elderly patients and those with underlying health conditions stay home to lessen their risk of exposure to COVID-19\. Cutting down on contact with others remains the most assured safeguard for minimising risk of exposure to COVID-19 and the consequences of infection. Our solution aims to improve existing technology as well as adding novel features allowing for more safety (safe bubbles) and flexibility (real-time allocation).Home health care scheduling and routing problems are notoriously hard to solve. They involve the assignment of caregivers to residencies to perform tasks that require specific skills within a predefined time frame. They are multi-period in nature, very large-scale, and they exhibit some very unique features, such as regional assignment restrictions, compliance with skill levels and other service qualifications, hard or soft synchronisation and priority constraints, multiple start and end locations (e.g., start from medical centre and return home at the end of the shift), different rules and targets for in-house and contracting employees, multiple transportation modes, multiple service time windows, deadlines, complex cost functions for outsourcing, reimbursement or overtime, hours of service regulations (e.g., max duty times and break requirements) multiple shifts per day, and other operational realities.Taking into account the challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, our solution will reduce infection risks associated with multiple care contacts, improve efficiency of staff, and optimise routes to minimize travel time and distance (thus lowering the environmental burden). This is in line with advice by the UK Government and NHS England on home health care which promotes segmenting patients into cohorts based on their risk of exposure to the virus. In addition it recommends segmenting staff into groups each dealing with a specific patient cohort and accounting for staff risks relating to the virus.Lastly, the proposed solution considers that there may be unexpected changes that disrupt the established service plan. Using our state-of-the-art staff scheduling technologies our solution is able to readjust the schedules in real-time.In summary, the tool will deliver the following benefits:1. Safe Bubbles - Reduced infection risk by restricting exposure due to contained staff and patient groups. allocate care workers in such a way that minimizes the size of potential infection chains, by forming contained "care bubbles".2. Increased flexibility and adaptability- Our solution allows for effective real-time scheduling to a) minimize the total required time of (often manual) rescheduling, and b) relieve inefficiency caused by unexpected events leading to delayed or low-quality service.3. Elevated capacity in the system -- State-of-the art optimisation to improve scheduling efficiencies within home care teams, increasing satisfaction and capacity for more patients to be supported.4. Smarter staff distribution -- Explicitly matching staff skills and preferences to patient need, ensuring staff focus contact time where their skills are needed most (including remote contacts where appropriate).5. Environmental benefits - Lowering emissions from both unnecessary (where remote consultation can suffice) and inefficient car journeys, and reducing the need for patients to go to health services.

随着更多老年患者和有潜在健康状况的患者留在家中以降低他们接触COVID-19的风险，预计家庭医疗保健和家庭护理的需求将增加。减少与他人的接触仍然是最有把握的保障，以尽量减少接触COVID-19的风险和感染的后果。我们的解决方案旨在改进现有技术，并添加新功能，以实现更高的安全性（安全气泡）和灵活性（实时分配）。众所周知，家庭医疗调度和路由问题很难解决。它们涉及将照顾者分配到驻地，在预定的时间范围内执行需要特定技能的任务。它们是多周期的，非常大的规模，并且它们表现出一些非常独特的特征，例如区域分配限制，符合技能水平和其他服务资格，硬或软同步和优先级限制，多个开始和结束位置（例如，从医疗中心开始，在轮班结束时回家）、内部员工和合同员工的不同规则和目标、多种运输模式、多个服务时间窗口、截止日期、外包、报销或加班的复杂成本函数、服务时间规定（例如，考虑到COVID-19大流行带来的挑战，我们的解决方案将减少与多个护理接触相关的感染风险，提高员工的效率，并优化路线，以最大限度地减少旅行时间和距离（从而降低环境负担）。这符合英国政府和英国国民保健服务（NHS）关于家庭医疗保健的建议，该建议促进根据患者暴露于病毒的风险将其分为队列。此外，它还建议将工作人员分成几组，每组处理一个特定的病人群体，并考虑到与病毒有关的工作人员风险。最后，拟议的解决方案认为，可能会有意想不到的变化，扰乱既定的服务计划。利用我们最先进的员工调度技术，我们的解决方案能够实时重新调整时间表。总而言之，该工具将提供以下好处：1.安全气泡-通过限制工作人员和患者群体的暴露来降低感染风险。通过形成封闭的“护理泡沫”，以尽量减少潜在感染链规模的方式分配护理人员。提高灵活性和适应性-我们的解决方案允许有效的实时调度，以a）最大限度地减少重新安排（通常是手动）所需的总时间，以及B）减轻因意外事件导致的效率低下，从而导致延迟或低质量的服务。3.提高系统的容量--最先进的优化技术，提高家庭护理团队的调度效率，提高满意度，并为更多的患者提供服务。4.更智能的人员分配--明确地将员工的技能和偏好与患者需求相匹配，确保员工将接触时间集中在最需要他们技能的地方（包括适当的远程接触）。环境效益-减少不必要的（远程咨询就足够了）和低效的汽车旅行的排放，并减少患者前往医疗服务的需求。