Coordinating effectively a heart attack pre-hospital service process using constraint optimization programming

摘要

The most crucial factor when dealing with heart attack incidents is the fast and accurate diagnosis and pre-hospital service of the patient. Considering the need of handling time efficiently, emphasis is paid on the interval time management starting from the moment the incident is recognized up to the time the patient is in an emergency unit. In order to control time constraints, we propose a scheduling methodology in which the pre-hospital service is treated as a process consisted of three stages. These stages are represented by activities whose variables help us define accurately the problem. The scheduling of the activities is based on constraint optimization. A case study of five of heart attack reported incidents is analyzed and the results indicate the possible contribution of the application of this methodology. This methodology appears to be very useful, thanks to its ability not only to generate an effective initial schedule as an additional guidance to all participants involved in heart attack service, but also to respond to changes occurred once the first actions have started and abrupt complications necessitate additional or updated actions.