MIE Seminar: Steven Shechter, Professor in the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, "Mass vaccination scheduling: trading off infections, throughput, and overtime"

Content

Abstract: 

Mass vaccination is essential for epidemic control, but long queues can pose infection risks while waiting. We study how to schedule arrivals at a mass vaccination center to minimize a tri-objective function of a) the expected number of infections acquired while waiting, b) throughput, and c) overtime. Leveraging multimodularity results of a related optimization problem, we construct a solution algorithm and apply it to a case study of COVID-19. We find that although the standard equally-distributed, equally-spaced schedule sits near the Pareto-optimal frontier, it is located away from a sharp elbow in the trade-off between infections and overtime. Specifically, the “elbow policy'' achieves approximately 38% fewer expected infections for nearly the same expected overtime. We also discuss managerial insights around the structure of the optimal schedule and compare it to the well-known "dome-shaped'' policies found in other appointment scheduling settings.

(This is joint work with UBC PhD student, Shanshan Luo)

Bio: 

Steven Shechter is a Professor in the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. He joined UBC in 2006, after receiving his PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. His primary research interests are in the application of optimization, dynamic programming, and simulation modeling to health care. Past research projects include optimizing alarm thresholds for patients in an ICU, allocating operating room time for pediatric elective surgeries, and screening patients awaiting kidney transplant. Steven is a past recipient of the Career Investigator Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research in BC. He serves as an Associate Editor at Operations Research, Management Science, and is a Senior Editor at Production and Operations Management.