Industrial RX for healthcare: By noting and fixing inefficiencies, systems engineers - researchers and students - are out to show they can make medical practive cheaper while improving quality

摘要

With their lab coats and hospital badges, the 20-somethings pacing a trauma unit in California's Santa Clara Valley could easily be mistaken for medical residents. Though driven by the emergency-room dictum that every minute counts in saving a life, these aren't physicians in training. They're engineering undergraduates analyzing the movement of practitioners between supply shelves and patient, with the goal of reorganizing the room to shorten the route and hasten treatment. They're also early recruits in an ambitious effort by a few pioneering engineering schools to deploy a new class of medical professionals across the country - one that uses industrial and systems engineering to enhance clinical care while lowering costs.