Application of Simulation in Healthcare Service Operations: A Review and Research Agenda

TLDR: In this article, the authors analyze healthcare simulation literature of the past decade (2007-2016) that addresses operations management issues in various healthcare service delivery levels and categorizes the literature accordingly.

Abstract: The health system is intricate due to its dynamic nature and critical service requirements. The involvement of multiple layers of health service providers quadrupled this complexity and results in a complicated operating environment. Simulation is often considered an apt technique to model and study complex systems in the literature. The popularity of simulation in the healthcare domain had only accelerated with time and resulted in a large number of articles intended to solve myriad healthcare problems. This article analyzes healthcare simulation literature of the past decade (2007--2016) that addresses operations management issues in various healthcare service delivery levels and categorizes the literature accordingly. In the next step, we attempt to assimilate the entire literature to capture specific health issues addressed, operations management concepts applied, and simulation methods used, and identify major research gaps. Finally, we develop the research agenda from dividing these gaps into the contextual, conceptual, and methodological genre that is consistent with the previous state-of-the-art literature reviews in operations management. Furthermore, this article demonstrates other minute aspects such as “sources of funding” and “tools used for the research” to maintain coherence with the previous reviews in the healthcare simulation. The objective of this work is twofold: to connect the knowledge continuum to the present, and to provide potential research directions for future academicians.