Increasing Operational Service Levels Using Preventative Maintenance Optimization Strategies

The health tourism Industry is witnessing a sudden paradigm shift in last five years. India has become a home of traditional medicine that has been practiced for several thousand years as a part of manav dharma to give relief to the needy and mostly free of cost. With modern diagnostic and treatment facilities, experienced surgeons, one of the largest pharmaceutical industries in world, and a tradition of caring, India provides world class surgical and healthcare facilities, with comparable success rates and prompt service levels. The potential of medical tourism is such that it can even surpass the revenue earned from IT sector. Recognizing the pivotal contribution of medical tourism to the economic development, the Indian Government has initiated numerous measures to promote this vary young industry to attract international tourism. This has motivated to identify recent trends and opportunities in India for the medical and healthcare tourism, and to explore the critical factors which can lead to success of initiatives taken by ministry of tourism for the development of medical tourism in India. Finally paper suggests measures to enhance medical tourism in the country.

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How Will Digitalization Change Road Freight Transport? Scenarios Tested in Sweden

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13010304 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 304

Author(s):

Anna Pernestål ◽

Albin Engholm ◽

Marie Bemler ◽

Gyözö Gidofalvi

Keyword(s):

Freight Transport ◽

Sustainable Transportation ◽

Transport Sector ◽

Strategic Uncertainty ◽

Scenario Development ◽

Service Levels ◽

Urban Freight ◽

The Road ◽

Road Freight ◽

On The Road

Road freight transport is a key function of modern societies. At the same time, road freight transport accounts for significant emissions. Digitalization, including automation, digitized information, and artificial intelligence, provide opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and increase service levels in road freight transport. Digitalization may also radically change the business ecosystem in the sector. In this paper, the question, “How will digitalization change the road freight transport landscape?” is addressed by developing four exploratory future scenarios, using Sweden as a case study. The results are based on input from 52 experts. For each of the four scenarios, the impacts on the road freight transport sector are investigated, and opportunities and barriers to achieving a sustainable transportation system in each of the scenarios are discussed. In all scenarios, an increase in vehicle kilometers traveled is predicted, and in three of the four scenarios, significant increases in recycling and urban freight flows are predicted. The scenario development process highlighted how there are important uncertainties in the development of the society that will be highly important for the development of the digitized freight transport landscape. One example is the sustainability paradigm, which was identified as a strategic uncertainty.

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Introducing fairness in Norwegian air ambulance base location planning

Scandinavian Journal of Trauma Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine ◽

10.1186/s13049-021-00842-0 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Caroline J. Jagtenberg ◽

Maaike A. J. Vollebergh ◽

Oddvar Uleberg ◽

Jo Røislien

Keyword(s):

Social Welfare ◽

Social Welfare Function ◽

Mathematical Optimization ◽

Population Coverage ◽

Air Ambulance ◽

Service Levels ◽

Remote Areas ◽

The North ◽

Time Threshold ◽

Essential Question

Abstract Background A primary task of the Norwegian helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) is to provide advanced medical care to the critical ill and injured outside of hospitals. Where HEMS bases are located, directly influences who in the population can be reached within a given response time threshold and who cannot. When studying the locations of bases, the focus is often on efficiency, that is, maximizing the total number of people that can be reached within a given set time. This approach is known to benefit people living in densely populated areas, such as cities, over people living in remote areas. The most efficient solution is thus typically not necessarily a fair one. This study aims to incorporate fairness in finding optimal air ambulance base locations. Methods We solve multiple advanced mathematical optimization models to determine optimal helicopter base locations, with different optimization criteria related to the level of aversion to inequality, including the utilitarian, Bernoulli-Nash and iso-elastic social welfare functions. This is the first study to use the latter social welfare function for HEMS. Results Focusing on efficiency, a utilitarian objective function focuses on covering the larger cities in Norway, leaving parts of Norway largely uncovered. Including fairness by rather using an iso-elastic social welfare function in the optimization avoids leaving whole areas uncovered and in particular increases service levels in the north of Norway. Conclusions Including fairness in determining optimal HEMS base locations has great impact on population coverage, in particular when the number of base locations is not enough to give full coverage of the country. As results differ depending on the mathematical objective, the work shows the importance of not only looking for optimal solutions, but also raising the essential question of ‘optimal with respect to what’.

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