Making an Impact on Healthcare Logistics

This handbook provides our take on optimization of logistics processes in healthcare and on the gap that exists between theory and practice. We will bridge that gap as all theoretical results presented in this book have actually been implemented in the healthcare domain. We are driven by a desire to improve the healthcare system, by effectively making an impact with Operations Research (OR). We discuss specific projects that have addressed major challenges for healthcare Operations Research. We present our solution approaches, our approaches to implement the results in practice, and the impact on healthcare organizations. In addition, we discuss the problems we encountered when implementing the results in practice and how we addressed them. In this introductory chapter, we discuss the ecosystem of our research center CHOIR (Center for Healthcare Operations Improvement & Research) and demonstrate how we have an impact on healthcare logistics.