GEDMod – Towards a generic toolkit for emergency department modeling

The design of generic models, or generic building blocks, for health care operations has been discussed in depth and identified as one of the grand challenges for researchers in the field of Modeling and Simulation. In this paper we provide an investigative basis for answering recently raised research questions for a specific sub-domain of health care facilities and a specific Modeling and Simulation paradigm, i.e. Discrete Event Simulation Models of Emergency Departments. We perform a detailed analysis of a large set of published Emergency Department models. This analysis is executed following a structured conceptual modeling framework to ensure the coverage of key conceptual modeling aspects: objectives; input scenarios; output definitions, i.e. commonly used performance indicators; structural components such as physical resources and human resources (including expertise and skill levels); patient classifications (arrival modes, triage grades, complaint categories); patient pathways including triage, treatment (which possibly includes resuscitation or special care) and admission phases; and organizational structures including control policies. The resulting collection and classification of modeling archetypes are used as the basis for an initial generic modeling toolkit for Emergency Department operations. Thereby, the modeler is guided through the main steps of conceptual modeling of Emergency Departments and generic building blocks for each step are provided. The paper concludes with a discussion on the applicability and benefits of the resulting GEDMod framework along with the potential to combine the toolkit into a single generic Emergency Department model.