Solving patient referral problems by using bat algorithm.

Background: A two-hospital patient referral problem intends to calculate an optimal value of referral patients between two hospitals and to evaluate whether or not the current number of referral patients is too low.

Objective: The goal of this study is to develop a simulation-based optimization algorithm to find the optimal referral between two hospitals with the unfixed daily patient referral policy.

Methods: This study applied system simulation and a bat algorithm (BA) to build a simulation model in accordance with the status of the two hospitals case and to calculate an optimal value of daily referral patients.

Managing repeat digital radiography images-a systematic approach and improvement.

Repeat analysis is an important issue for improving image quality in the field of radiology. However, the required data for repeat analysis is not easy to collect, and the accuracy of the analysis results remains controversial. The main purpose of this study is to introduce a systematic approach and, with the assistance of information technology, to improve the accuracy of data collection methods and repeat analysis in a fully digital environment.