Healthcare System Engineering Group

Wayne State University has an excellent long tradition and track record in healthcare system engineering research and teaching. The faculty members and students from the Department of Industrial and systems Engineering participated, involved and helped local and national health care institutions for their search for excellence. One of our former faculty members, 2010 Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Award winner Dr. Vinod Sahney, was a pioneer in healthcare system engineering and the chief architect for Henry Ford Health Systems's progress in healthcare efficiency and quality for over 20 year. Over the years, the faculty members and students have successfully completed many projects with many healthcare institutions, such as, Henry Ford Health Systems, Detroit Medical Center, and Blue Cross Blue Shield and dealt with such diverse topics as surgery operations, scheduling, and supply chain management. Our recent breakthrough happened since 2008, when Dr. Kai Yang and our student team successfully launched and completed several system redesign projects in John D. Dingell Detroit VA Medical Center. This work was valued highly by Detroit VA leadership, and eventually, one of our team member, Ms. Susan Q Yu, became a leader in Detroit VA’s system redesign group. She along with our other students started Detroit VA System Redesign Department and many more successful projects were completed since then, greatly impact Detroit VA operations. Since 2009, our group has been growing strong in terms funded projects and research activities, our group is awarded 19 funded projects over $4.61 million (measured by actual share with regard joint projects). In 2012, our group is awarded an NSF research award CMMI-1233504, Collaborative Research: An Allocation Model with Dynamic Updates for Balanced Workload Distribution on Patient Centered Medical Homes.