On people and complexity in healthcare service supply

Abstract

Healthcare logistics is treated as a fundamentally emergent complex system primarily because a broad range of stakeholders are included. The patient is the primary “customer” of the service producers in the supply chain, including the doctors, nurses, medicine and insurance providers, and hospital administrators. Problematic issues regarding healthcare quality that need to be solved or improved are discussed, and suggestions for furthering and accelerating progress are offered. Careful application of information technology in designing appropriate information systems is advocated. Three specific illustrative cases of healthcare services that have been analyzed and assessed are summarized. The overall intent is to motivate creative processes for delivering more efficient and effective healthcare utilizing complex system behaviors and engineering principles, and an ethically-founded worldview. Keywords: case studies, collaboration, complex systems engineering, complex systems, ecosystems, healthcare services, information systems, interdependencies, logistics, process emergence, supply chain management