Guido Guizzi

Improving healthcare using cognitive computing based software: an application in emergency situation

The goal of this paper is to define the platform specifications dealing with medical information sharing both from research viewpoint and in terms of local health care. The purpose of this research work is based on doctor - patient relationships: VDS - Virtual Medical Doctor System. At this stage the platform is only used for scientific purposes. In particular, we assume the integrated design of the platform based on different levels (layers), which may be interconnected through the information flows (or links). The first level (the lower) involves the construction of a VDS platform. Based on this system it is possible to foresee a number of extensions such as social network for scientific research design, and risk analysis tool.

An Innovative Contribution to Health Technology Assessment

Healthcare is moving towards increased assistance needs with limited resources, both in economics terms, in personnel or space terms, leading to the usage of specific analysis for the acquisition, evaluation and assessment of medical technologies. The systematic evaluation of properties, effects or other impacts of a medical (or health) technology with a broad multidisciplinary approach is named Health Technology Assessment (HTA).This work presents an approach of a HTA protocol for the classification of hospitals or health facilities equipments, realized by combining the classic HTA concepts with hierarchic clustering techniques in a multidisciplinary analysis of requirements, cost, impact of logistics, technology associated risks.

A resilient approach to manage a supply chain network

Today we depend more and more on logistic networks, which often know nothing, or worse, on which our power of control is almost zero. It is impossible to imagine a life without certain types of products or food, all of that to get us often follow long and complex network and therefore vulnerable. Let see how increase in energy costs has engulfed many small companies. Differently by rising energy costs, there are also changes that are not so easily predictable, so it is essential for the survival of a company to have “redundant” resources, able to operate strategies and proactive behavior. Its important to be flexible and adapt better to the changes that are imposed by external or even internal conditions. More than on flexibility, it is necessary to focus on the concept of Resilience, which requires the ability to remain calm, to address a crisis, but maybe leave it weakened but with the strength, the ability and the confidence to create a tomorrow of own business, adapting to change.

Integrating model to support decision making

The aim of the paper is to investigate the integration of different analytical and simulations tools to support people to make decisions, and to show how the relationships among the different methods can be advantageous to solve specific problems. ORM (object - role modeling), PN (Petri Nets) and SD (System Dynamics) have been combined to capture the static and dynamic aspects of system.

Efficient Supply Chain Management: Traceability and Transparency

The development of SCM systems is a difficult activity, since it involves integrating critical business flows both within and among participating companies. The inherently difficulty of the problem is exacerbated by the business constraint (that almost invariably applies in the real world) that the investments made by individual companies throughout the years must be preserved. This maps to major design constraints, since SCM systems must be built around the preexisting ICT infrastructures of the individual companies and – also importantly – without affecting the local policies. We propose a federation-based approach to seamless and effective integration of legacy enterprise information systems into a unified SCM system. The proposed solution is implemented using a combination of Open Source BPM and cloud computing platform, and validated with respect to a real world use case taken from a research activity (namely: the GLOB-ID project) conducted cooperatively by academic and industrial parties.

Swarm Intelligence in Evacuation Problems: A Review

In this paper authors introduce swarm intelligence’s algorithms (ACO and PSO) to determine the optimum path during an evacuation process. Different PSO algorithms are compared when applied to an evacuation process and results reveal important aspects, as following detailed.

A MODEL FOR INTEGRATING ELECTRIC POWER SUPPLY WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES IN MANUFACTURING COMPANIES

In this paper, the authors, consistent with the philosophy of Sustainable Manufacturing, propose a generalised methodology for replacing/supplementing traditional energy sources with renewable energy sources. The methodology, developed stochastically, makes extensive use of Discrete Event Simulation and the Monte Carlo method to optimize, for each hour of operation, the ratio of production from Renewable Energy Sources to supply from traditional sources. The final output is summarised as a Cumulative Distribution Function of the hourly lack of power produced by Renewable Energy Sources compared to system demands. In this way, the manager can, sufficiently in advance, select the most appropriate procurement strategy.

A GENERALIZED METHOD TO STOCHASTICALLY ASSESS INVESTMENTS IN PHOTOVOLTAIC PLANTS

In this paper, the Authors present the results of their research conducted to stochastically define a method to assess investments in electric production plants using renewable energy with particular reference to photovoltaic plants. The method is broken down into six sequential steps where particularly suitable instruments are used for stochastic applications such as: the Monte Carlo method, the Design of Experiments and the Response Surface Methodology. It is therefore possible to obtain regression meta-models as output that allow us to highlight the cause and effect relationship between some input variables and the main assessment parameters of an investment. The methods declared objective is to allow possible investors to use a reliable assessment instrument and to provide clearly interpretable quantitative answers.

A decision support tool, implemented in a system dynamics model, to improve the effectiveness in the hospital emergency department

The emergency department of a hospital is, among all areas in which lean policies are focused, the one that has received the most attention. The emergency room, in fact, plays a vital role in providing primary care to patients and is also recognised for the contribution it gives to society. The important results in terms of cost savings and improving the flow due to the reduction of the waiting time of the patients, obtained from major international hospitals, were crucial to assess whether it was possible and useful to implement similar improvements in Italy, certainly not without to many problems in the provision of health services. This paper explores what can be improved for the department to be more efficient, using simulation techniques based on dynamic and continuous logics (system dynamics).

Design Support System of Fishing Vessel Through Simulation Approach

The objective of this work is to create a module for a ship maneuvering simulator, which will allow the training of the crews of vessels in deep water. In this work we developed a system of “artificial intelligence” to model marine biological entities: this system can simulate the movement of a school of fish in a realistic manner. In addition, we developed an analysis of the main instruments on board and problems relating to the virtual simulation.