Sajal Mukhopadhyay

Hiring Doctors in E-Healthcare With Zero Budget.

The doctors (or expert consultants) are the critical resources on which the success of critical medical cases are heavily dependent. With the emerging technologies (such as video conferencing, smartphone, etc.) this is no longer a dream but a fact, that for critical medical cases in a hospital, expert consultants from around the world could be hired, who may be present physically or virtually. Earlier, this interesting situation by taking the expert consultancies from outside the hospital had been studied, but under monetary perspective. In this paper, for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, we investigate the situation, where the below income group (BIG) people of the society may be served efficiently through the expert consultancy by the renowned doctors from outside of the hospital under zero budget. This will help us saving many lives which will fulfil the present day need of biomedical research. We propose three mechanisms: Random pick-assign mechanism (RanPAM), Truthful optimal allocation mechanism (TOAM), and Truthful optimal allocation mechanism for incomplete preferences (TOAM-IComP) to allocate the doctor to the patient. With theoretical analysis, we demonstrate that the TOAM is strategy-proof, and exhibits a unique core property. The mechanisms are also validated with exhaustive experiments.

Auction aware selection of doctors in E-Healthcare

E-Healthcare system is emerging as one of the most upcoming technologies to provide an efficient and automated healthcare infrastructure. Earlier there had been some works to schedule the internal staffs of a medical unit (may be very large) for working in the operation theater or controlling the outdoor units. However, it is observed that, with the unprecedented growth of the communication media (specially Internet), it may be a common phenomena to hire expert medical staffs (especially doctors) for a critical operation from outside of the medical unit where the operation is taking place. In this paper auction based schemes are proposed for hiring doctors from outside of the medical unit to have the expertise during a critical operation. The schemes are also validated with exhaustive experiments.

Incentive and Quality Aware Participatory Sensing System

Participatory Sensing system (PSS) is being thought of as an alternative model in the pervasive computing environment, to collect effective data from mobile human agents, where deployment of sensor agents to collect data will be costly. One of the main difficulties in collecting data from the human agents is that, they are not willing to participate in this data collecting process. Several incentive schemes, based on the framework of auction theory, are proposed to motivate the users to participate in this interesting data collection model. However none of the incentive schemes used to judge the quality of the users along with their bid prices to select the human agents. If the quality of the agents is used, the data collection model may attract the bidders with slightly higher valuation but providing a good quality data. This scheme will make the PSS more realistic. In this paper, an efficient scheme is proposed not only to motivate users but also to restrict manipulation in the bidding substantially. The simulation study shows that the proposed economic model can maintain better participation of the agents compared to the existing schemes and also it will perform better when the agents are rational.

An Efficient Auction Based Ticket Booking Scheme for Indian Cinemas

Indian film industry is one of the biggest in the world. A considerable number of movies out of the all movies released in a year are considered as hit movies. In a cinema hall k tickets are available and for a hit movie more than k people give demand for a ticket to watch the movie. To earn more profit in that environment, in this paper an auction based truthful mechanism is proposed for selling all the tickets of the cinema hall and it is shown that our auction based scheme is significantly better than the existing scheme in terms of the total income earned per annum. Our scheme could be applied on any film industry.

Allocating resources in cloud computing when users have strict preferences

The economic settings of allocating resources in cloud computing have been studied, so far, by the concept of mechanism design with money. However in some applications resources can be disseminated by the service providers to some users free of cost. The problem of allocating resources in this charitable environment predominantly becomes challenging if the users try to pick their favorite service provider. To the best of our knowledge, this highly possible framework of allocating resources when every user has strict preference ordering of the service providers, is not studied in cloud computing environment. First time this framework is studied in this paper and a DSIC mechanism is rendered, which satisfies the core allocation.

A Budget Feasible Mechanism for Hiring Doctors in E-Healthcare

Throughout the past decade, there has been an extensive research on scheduling the hospital resources such as the operation theatre(s) (OTs) and the experts (such as nurses, doctors etc.) inside the hospitals. With the technological growth, mainly advancement in communication media (such as smart phones, video conferencing, smart watches etc.) one may think of taking the expertise by the doctors (distributed around the globe) from outside the in-house hospitals. Earlier this interesting situation of hiring doctors from outside the hospitals has been studied from monetary (with patient having infinite budget) and non-monetary perspectives in strategic setting. In this paper, the more realistic situation is studied in terms of hiring the doctors from outside the hospital when a patient is constrained by budget. Our proposed mechanisms follow the two pass mechanism design framework each consisting of allocation rule and payment rule. Through simulations, we evaluate the performance and validate our proposed mechanisms.

On free of cost service distribution in cloud computing

The allocation of cloud resources is a widely studied problem in the current scenario. The economic settings of allocating resources in cloud computing are being studied in the literature over the last 7 years to some extent by the concept of mechanism design with money which has been emerged as a natural tool to model situations where the agents have their own private information. However, in some applications resources can be distributed by the service providers to some users free of cost. In this paper, a two sided matching market for allocating service providers to the users when both sides have strict preferences, is addressed based on the concept of mechanism design without money. Some simulation results are imparted to illustrate the idea better.

Auction Based Ticket Selling Schemes with Multiple Demand from the Agents in Static Environment

First-come-first-serve (FCFS) scheme is used for selling the tickets in ticket market that is a multi-million dollar industry for any popular event. But in a competitive environment is this FCFS efficient? In earlier literature it has been shown that the auction based alternative solutions using the framework of mechanism design, a sub field of game theory, can provide better results against FCFS in terms of profit making and efficiency in allocation. However the solution proposed in the earlier literature can address the ticket selling environment where an agent can give demand for a single ticket in static environment. In many situations a single agent can give demand for multiple tickets in static environment. In this paper, with the use of mechanism design framework some elegant solutions are proposed in static environment where an agent can give demand for multiple tickets.

A new framework for an efficient ticket booking scheme based on mechanism design

Ticket market is a multi-million dollar industry for any popular event. When the tickets are sold by the event organizers in the ticket market, the most popular scheme used is the first-come-first-serve FCFS. But in a competitive environment is this FCFS efficient? In this paper this situation is investigated from the view point of profit making and efficiency in allocation of the tickets that are being sold. In ticket market multiple customers are handled when each customer has some private value not known by others for purchasing a ticket. One tool that has found wide-spread application to address this situation is the framework of mechanism design. In this paper with the use of mechanism design framework some elegant alternative solutions are proposed so that it could outperform the earlier FCFS scheme both from the view point of profit making and efficiency in allocation.

An efficient multiunit VCG mechanism for the ticket booking scheme of the J-league football tournament

The J League (Japan Professional Football League), is the top professional association football league in Japan. Contested by 18 clubs, with teams playing 34 games each totalling 306 games in the season. It is one of the most successful and lucrative football league in the Asian club football. It is also the only league which has been given top class ranking by the Asian Football Confederation[11]. In a football match, k tickets are available and more than k people give demand for a ticket to watch the match. To earn more profit in that environment, in this paper an auction based truthful mechanism is proposed for selling all the tickets of the football match and it is shown that our auction based scheme is significantly better than the existing scheme in terms of the total income earned per match.