A fuzzy simulated evolution algorithm for multi-objective homecare worker scheduling

Due to ever-growing need for satisfactory homecare services in every society, development of efficient staff scheduling methods is crucial. Homecare services are aimed at providing medical, paramedical and social aid to patients at their own homes, leading to reduced hospitalization and healthcare operations costs in the medium to long term. However, the homecare staff scheduling problem is a complex one as it combines the hard vehicle routing and the staff assignment problems. This research presents a fuzzy simulated evolution algorithm, based on fuzzy evaluation, to address staff planning and scheduling in a home care environment. The objective is to decide (i) which patients to assign to each staff, and (ii) the best route or trip for each worker to execute the healthcare tasks, to satisfy the time window preferences of the patients. Results on illustrative experiments presented show that the approach is promising.