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Dynamic scheduling with due dates and time windows: an application to chemotherapy patient appointment booking

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  • Yasin Gocgun
  • Martin Puterman

Abstract

We study a scheduling problem in which arriving patients require appointments at specific future days within a treatment specific time window. This research is motivated by a study of chemotherapy scheduling practices at the British Columbia Cancer Agency (Canada). We formulate this problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). Since the resulting MDPs are intractable to exact methods, we employ linear-programming-based Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) to obtain approximate solutions. Using simulation, we compare the performance of the resulting ADP policies to practical and easy-to-use heuristic decision rules under diverse scenarios. The results indicate that ADP is promising in several scenarios, and that a specific easy-to-use heuristic performs well in the idealized chemotherapy scheduling setting we study. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Yasin Gocgun & Martin Puterman, 2014. "Dynamic scheduling with due dates and time windows: an application to chemotherapy patient appointment booking," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 60-76, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:hcarem:v:17:y:2014:i:1:p:60-76
    DOI: 10.1007/s10729-013-9253-z
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    References listed on IDEAS

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