Special Issue Scope: Healthcare is a perfect example of an extremely complex industry that is marred by poor efficiencies, rising costs, and high regulation. The complexity in healthcare often arises due to the involvement of multidisciplinary teams having interactions among several actors and stakeholders such as patients, hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, etc. Such complex interactions require us to develop decision models that can suggest improvements in information, work, material, and patient flow. Several factors contribute towards poor efficiencies within the healthcare system. Uncertain payback from the investment in healthcare technology potentially contributes towards low productivity outputs. Another factor is the presence of usually large supporting staff. There is a need for decision models that could suggest better utilization of hospital resources and a reduction in the overall patient service time per visit.  A contributing factor is the high regulation in the healthcare industry. Several government bodies and agencies such as CMS, FDA, Joint Commission, NCQA, etc. exercise tremendous control over various processes down to the very atomic level. Though such regulations generally tend to improve the quality and effectiveness of the entire healthcare system, it does potentially reduce the efficiency of healthcare systems. This special issue invites original manuscripts of high quality research that utilize various modeling and analytical approaches and make significant contribution towards a) improving the management or performance of any aspect of healthcare network or any of its constituents, b) using innovative approaches towards resolving problems of significant interest in the healthcare domain, c) proposing and testing decision models that suggest improvement in state-of-art healthcare practice or delivery.  

Guest Editors:Ashish Gupta, Minnesota State University Moorhead, USA, gupta@mnstate.edu  Ramesh Sharda, Oklahoma State University, USA, ramesh.sharda@okstate.edu   

Suggested Topics include, but not limited to, using various modeling approaches that improve our decision making abilities in following areas (not an exhaustive list):Decision models of healthcare reforms and policy analysisModels of healthcare regulatory processes and delivery mechanisms  Models that suggest improvement in patient care quality and hospital performanceImproving decision making at various healthcare stakeholders and actors levelSocial networking in healthcare Business process and workflow management approaches as applied in healthcare delivery Models suggesting improvement in Information, patient and material flow within and across healthcare networksDecision models suggesting effective and efficient utilization of healthcare resourcesModel based solutions to the problems in specific healthcare units such as oncology, cardiology Decision models that help understand and control disease spread and progression, epidemic outbreakModels of drug development and other aspects of pharmaceutical industryDecision models related to the use (implementation, etc.) of technology in healthcare such as electronic medical records, telemedicine, RFID applications, etc. Decision models related to the next generation healthcare cyber infrastructureModeling security and privacy related aspects of healthcare recordsCase studies utilizing modeling and simulation approaches 

Submission Instructions: Inquiries should be directed to both the editors at gupta@mnstate.edu  and ramesh.sharda@okstate.edu . All papers must be submitted electronically to DSSspecialissue@gmail.com . Please submit two copies in PDF: one with author information and affiliation and the other for double blind review process without any author information. The submission must not exceed 34 pages, including abstract, keywords, tables, figures, all references and appendices, should be typed double-spaced throughout with one-inch margins and using 11 point font. Please read the author guidelines at: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505540/authorinstructions   

Important Dates: Paper Submission: Sept 15, 2010, Final Authors Notification:  May 15, 2011Projected Publication: 2011 

Selected papers from the first round of revision may be invited to another follow-up workshop organized by the guest editors to provide additional feedback. Please note that acceptance or invitation to either workshop, though increases acceptance likelihood, does not guarantee acceptance into the special issue. 

Direct URL: http://www.elsevierscitech.com/cfp/Flyer_Modeling_for_better_healthcare_final.pdf  

Ashish Gupta, PhDAssociate Professor School of BusinessMinnesota State University MoorheadMoorhead MN 56563Phone: (218) 477-4651http://www.mnstate.edu/gupta/