Towards a framework for holistic analysis of healthcare systems

Abstract

We present a work in progress towards building a framework for holistic analysis of Healthcare Systems (HSs) through a disciplined stratification of concerns and a systematic integration of simulation processes in different layers. A lot of simulation-based research efforts can be found in the literature where HSs are studied with focus on perspectives such as the allocation of scarce health care human and infrastructural facilities to meet the needs of patients, disease spreading within an hypothetical community, and so on. The different perspectives are often studied in isolation with constant parameters as abstractions of the influences of other phenomena on the system under study. We propose a methodology for a "loosely" integrated simulation where independent simulation processes of disparate concerns in HS exchange live updates of their influences on one another. We think this approach will take the results obtained closer to the reality of the interactions between health phenomena and help stakeholders take more realistic decisions.