Improving intervention design to promote cervical cancer screening among hard-to-reach women: assessing beliefs and predicting individual attendance probabilities in Bogotá, Colombia.

Background: Despite being a preventable disease, cervical cancer continues to be a public health concern, affecting mainly lower and middle-income countries. Therefore, in Bogotá a home-visit based program was instituted to increase screening uptake. However, around 40% of the visited women fail to attend their Pap smear test appointments.

Variation in referral rates to emergency departments and inpatient services from a GP out of hours service and the potential impact of alternative staffing models.

Introduction: Out of hours (OOHs) primary care is a critical component of the acute care system overnight and at weekends. Referrals from OOH services to hospital will add to the burden on hospital assessment in the ED and on-call specialties.

Methods: We studied the variation in referral rates (to the ED and direct specialty admission) of individual clinicians working in the Oxfordshire, UK OOH service covering a population of 600 000 people.

Designing the blood supply chain: how much, how and where?

Background: The topology of the blood supply chain network can take different forms in different settings, depending on geography, politics, costs, etc. Many developed countries are moving towards centralized networks. The goal for all blood distribution networks, regardless of topology, remains the same: to satisfy demand at minimal cost and minimal wastage.

Operational research techniques applied throughout cancer care services: a review.

Cancer is a disease affecting increasing numbers of people. In the UK, the proportion of people affected by cancer is projected to increase from 1 in 3 in 1992, to nearly 1 in 2 by 2020. Health services to tackle cancer can be grouped broadly into prevention, diagnosis, staging, and treatment.

Programmatic implications of implementing the relational algebraic capacitated location (RACL) algorithm outcomes on the allocation of laboratory sites, test volumes, platform distribution and space requirements.

Introduction: CD4 testing in South Africa is based on an integrated tiered service delivery model that matches testing demand with capacity. The National Health Laboratory Service has predominantly implemented laboratory-based CD4 testing. Coverage gaps, over-/under-capacitation and optimal placement of point-of-care (POC) testing sites need investigation.

Patient choice modelling: how do patients choose their hospitals?

As an aid to predicting future hospital admissions, we compare use of the Multinomial Logit and the Utility Maximising Nested Logit models to describe how patients choose their hospitals. The models are fitted to real data from Derbyshire, United Kingdom, which lists the postcodes of more than 200,000 admissions to six different local hospitals. Both elective and emergency admissions are analysed for this mixed urban/rural area.

Simulation-optimization model for production planning in the blood supply chain.

Production planning in the blood supply chain is a challenging task. Many complex factors such as uncertain supply and demand, blood group proportions, shelf life constraints and different collection and production methods have to be taken into account, and thus advanced methodologies are required for decision making. This paper presents an integrated simulation-optimization model to support both strategic and operational decisions in production planning.