Modeling and Analysis of Colonoscopy Screening Process Using Markov Chain Model

Abstract

In this paper, a theoretic approach on the basis of a Markov chain model is proposed to analyze the colonoscopy screening process (CSP). Colorectal cancer is the one with the second highest death rate in the United States. The objective of this study is to provide a quantitative model for identifying bottlenecks of CSP and improving the process by analyzing the system utilization and the number of served patients. To realize the objective, this study proposes a continuous-time Markov chain model for which the variability of patient arrival and service cycle times are considered. An illustrative example is used to test the effectiveness of this proposed model and results indicate that the proposed method is practical and efficient in measuring the system’s performance and identifying the bottlenecks. The proposed approach can also be extended to study other care delivery processes and improve patient flows for healthcare professionals.

Lu He 何璐

Faculty of Supply Chain Management

My research interests include systematic resource optimization, multitask prediction, and predictive-driven mixed integer programming.