CAREER: Optimization of Screening and Treatment Delivery Systems for Chronic Diseases

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project is to develop new operations research (OR) models and methods to advance the science of health care delivery for life-threatening chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Recent advances in medical treatment have resulted in a longer lifespan for many Americans. At the same time the patient population is growing more complex, with multiple chronic diseases, competing risks of health complications, and medication conflicts. As a result, medical decisions are becoming harder because what helps one patient or condition may harm another. Chronic disease screening and medical treatment decisions combine large state spaces that define patient health characteristics, such as clinical risk factors and medication histories, with uncertainty in future health outcomes due to differences among patients in genetic, environmental, and other factors. Decisions about treatment and screening take place over long periods (sometimes decades) under constraints due to medication conflicts. As a result, the stochastic and sequential decision making process gives rise to computational optimization problems that are often unsolvable with state-of-the-art algorithms and computing resources. However, these problems have promising structural properties that can be exploited to achieve meaningful theoretical insights and computationally tractable stochastic optimization methods. Advancing the understanding of chronic care delivery has the potential to improve the quality of life for a large and growing proportion of the US population. The translation of discoveries based on this research has the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of national screening and treatment policies. Results of this research will be disseminated to the medical community, the engineering research community, and incorporated into educational materials ranging from high school to doctoral studies.