Scheduling in Healthcare: Innovative Models and Algorithms
A special issue of Algorithms (ISSN 1999-4893). This special issue belongs to the section "Algorithms for Multidisciplinary Applications".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 410
Editors
Interests: health monitoring; healthcare; operations research
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: systems and control; operations research and discrete; optimization
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Introduction (scientific background and relevance). Healthcare systems are facing in- creasing pressure to deliver timely, safe, and equitable care under severe resource constraints, high demand variability, and growing care complexity. Scheduling decisions, spanning operating rooms, outpatient clinics, diagnostic services, inpatient beds, staff rosters, and home-care visits, are central levers to improve access, reduce waiting times, enhance patient flow, and increase resource utilization. At the same time, the growing availability of operational data, the widespread adoption of digital health technologies, and the need for resilient decision-making under uncertainty create new opportunities for advanced scheduling models and algorithms.
Aim of the Special Issue and relation to the journal scope. This Special Issue aims to collect cutting-edge contributions on innovative scheduling approaches for healthcare, emphasizing rigorous methodological advances with clear managerial insights. In line with the journal's scope in operations research, decision analytics, and computational methods, the Special Is- sue seeks papers that bridge theory and impactful applications in health services and health logistics. We particularly encourage contributions that address integrated, multi-resource and multi-stage planning problems; data-informed decision support; and implementation-oriented studies. From a methodological perspective, we welcome innovative models and algorithms as well as hybrid solution approaches that combine mixed-integer optimization and constraint- based scheduling techniques, along with decomposition strategies, metaheuristics and hybrid exact–heuristic (matheuristic) methods, simulation-based optimization, reinforcement learning, digital twins, and other data-driven scheduling paradigms to address complexity, uncertainty, and real-world constraints in healthcare delivery.
Suggested topics and article types for submissions. Original research articles and re- views are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Operating room scheduling; surgical case mix, master schedules, advance and allocation scheduling, upstream and downstream resources management.
- Appointment scheduling and patient flow management (outpatient clinics, emergency departments, intensive care).
- Bed management across units and care pathways.
- Workforce rostering; skill-based and preference-aware.
- Home healthcare routing-and-scheduling; continuity-of-care.
- Scheduling under uncertainty (stochastic, robust, distributionally robust), real-time/online and reactive scheduling.
- Fairness, service-level guarantees, and patient-centered objectives in healthcare scheduling.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Prof. Dr. Elena Tanfani
Prof. Dr. Giuliana Carello
Prof. Dr. Mauro Passacantando
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Algorithms is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- healthcare
- operating room and appointment scheduling
- workforce rostering
- patient flow
- integrated planning
- stochastic and robust optimization
- simulation-optimization
- metaheuristics
- hybrid approaches
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