Model driven healthcare: Disconnected practices

Over the past decades simulation has been recognized as a vital tool for solving problems within the healthcare sector, almost catching up with other areas. It is evident that healthcare systems are rapidly evolving into complex and dynamic environments whilst bearing a multitude of stakeholders. Simulation has originally emerged from military and manufacturing applications that mainly follow sequential processing with pre-specified targets. Such an approach is too rigid and irrelevant to the complexity and dynamism of healthcare systems, where lack of understanding is a common feature. This is mainly attributed to lack of understating of the life cycle of healthcare services. In this paper we attempt to define the life cycle of healthcare services and explore the use of modeling and simulation in supporting healthcare service development and management. We particularly explore a number of exemplars of how modeling was used to support earlier stages of the service life cycle.