EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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1182. Optimizing the training of community first responders

Invited abstract in session MB-10: EMS and crisis logistics, stream OR in Health Services (ORAHS).

Monday, 10:30-12:00
Room: 11 (building: 116)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Brian Overbeek
Operations Analytics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
2. Rob van der Mei
CWI
3. Caroline Jagtenberg
Supply Chain Analytics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
4. Pieter van den Berg
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University

Abstract

Traditional emergency medical services can be expanded by Community First (CFR) systems. In such CFR systems, trained volunteers near the incident location can be dispatched, potentially reducing the emergency response time.

LIVES is an example of such a CFR system; LIVES dispatches volunteers to medical emergencies in (mostly) rural areas of the UK, where the response time of EMS can be rather long. The volunteers of LIVES respond to a wide variety of medical emergencies. However, not all volunteers are qualified to handle all emergencies. Volunteers are classified into different categories based on their medical skills. LIVES provides training to its volunteers to increase their skill level, allowing volunteers to be dispatched to more emergencies as a result. LIVES has a fixed training budget and would like to know how to divide it over its volunteer base. We leverage historical data on incidents as well as volunteer availability, derived from individual sessions in which a volunteer was logged on within the system. Their stochastic availability, combined with a geographically diverse volunteer set, translates into a unique optimization problem: how to spend the training budget in such a way that response times are minimized. In this talk, we present our ongoing work on how to tackle this optimization problem.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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