Course description

Course Contents

Logistics as discipline

• Industrial logistics - history and overview
• Capacity and demand
• Variation
• Quality management

Logistics for redesign of care processes

• Logistical concepts in care
• Process analysis
• Administrative processes
• Organisational support
• Finance
• Process redesign

IT support

• IT systems supporting patient flow (ERP)
• Logistic information

Tools

• Use of simulation tool for improvement/redesign
• Workflow management
• Project management issues

Cases

 

Course lay-out

Lectures and work groups 20%, home study 80%. The course will have a weekly routine with lectures at Monday's and Friday's for feedback and discussions based upon related week assignments individually or in work groups. For intermediate questions and discussions Blackboard will be used. Sheets used in lectures will be available on Blackboard, some lectures will be digitally available after the sessions on Blackboard (spoken at next day and streaming video within one week).

 

Educational goals

Healthcare providers have to respond to changes in demand of its stakeholders in terms of quality, cost and delivery. These demands create high pressure on operational processes. In the past decades industry successfully developed and implemented logistic tools to respond to these often conflicting demands.

 

In healthcare we are on the edge of broad implementation of these logistic solutions. In practice a medical informatical student will face these questions and often will play a supportive role in redesign processes using ICT aids. At the end of the course the student will have basic knowledge of the working field and tools of logistics within healthcare and its practical solutions using IT aids.

 

Involved departments

• Clinical Informatics

 

Evaluation

Evaluation of the course and assignments

One major recommendation could be done; replace the coordinator, the coordinator was vague, inconsistent, assignments were below acceptable difficultly and workload (my mother could complete these assignments), boring lectures (playing with toy-cars is not interesting) and bad coordination. For one assignment (simulation) we needed computers and a special application. This application was installed in a practical room called L-007, however this was a Medicine practical room which was occupied al the time and moreover we have no permission to install it in our practical rooms. The coordinator refused to solve the logistical problem (how ironic; a course about logistics and the coordinator who cannot apply the rules of logistics). The study materials were outdated and not interesting and too much. Some topics were interesting, but the most topics were not interesting for a medical informatics student. The exam was unclear and the correction report was unclear. I am glad that I passed the course the first time and the month was over; however I missed the oppurtunity to get my Master's degree at 'Cum Laude', because I scored a 6.0 at the exam.