Georgia Tech students win SHS competition.(KEEPING PACE WITH IIE)

Two students from the Georgia Institute of Technology were recognized by the Society for Health Systems for outstanding papers that demonstrate the use of IE skills in improving a health care problem.

Graduate student Faramroze G. Engineer and undergraduate Sarah Shacter presented their winning papers from the SHS Student Paper Competition during the society's annual conference in Orlando, Fla., in February.

Submissions for the competition included research projects, theoretical research, case studies, and class projects in which IE skills were used or could be used to improve a health care-related service, product, or process. Judging criteria included originality and soundness, applicability, methodology, organization, and quality of the paper.

Engineer's paper, "Catch-up Scheduling for Childhood Vaccination," proposes an optimization-based tool for constructing catch-up schedules for childhood immunization. The schedules would ensure that all the remaining doses are administered and the rules and guidelines regarding the doses are not violated, in hopes of removing the tedious numerical and computational aspects while maintaining a level of generality that allows health care providers to accommodate easily for changes in the existing rules and adding whole new vaccines to the schedule line-up.

Engineer hopes the new tool will improve the effectiveness of childhood vaccination programs by improving timely vaccination rates as well as overall awareness and involvement in the process.

Shacter's paper, "Building a Consumer-Driven Healthcare System: Making Consumer-Driven Health Plans Effective," suggests that today's health care system is experiencing a push toward increased consumerism, though consumer-driven health plans are not currently exhibiting success due to poor structure. She writes that a transformation of consumer-driven health plan (CDHP) design would improve the overall effect and success of consumer-driven health care. Objectives such as price transparency, simplified charge and payment structures, and easy patient access and scheduling must be met in order to include consumerism in health care successfully.

The paper also addresses the structure of a consumer-responsible health care system, the necessity of such a system, and strategies and barriers to achieving an effective use of consumer-driven health plans.

Engineer is pursuing a Ph.D. in optimization within industrial engineering. He holds a B.E. in engineering science as well as an M.E. in operations research from the University of Auckland. He is a student member of IIE and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. His research interests focus on large-scale optimization for scheduling, transportation, and logistics.

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Shacter is pursuing a B.I.E. degree at Georgia Tech. She participates in undergraduate research with the Georgia Tech Health Systems Institute and is involved with the industrial engineering honor society Alpha Phi Mu and the National Society of Collegiate Scholars. Upon graduation, she will begin a graduate program in health systems at Georgia Tech, during which she will continue her current research with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and participate in a graduate research assistantship.

Winners in the undergraduate and graduate competitions received a cash gift of $500 per team and an additional $750 for air/hotel/miscellaneous travel expenses per team. The Graduate Paper Award was sponsored by Premier Inc.

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