University to Host NSF Leadership Conference About Health Care Systems

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – While recent decades have seen dramatic advances in medical science, the systems for delivering that health care in the United States have changed more slowly, leaving a system that health care logistics experts often describe as having poor quality, safety, and efficiency, combined with exploding cost.

The University of Arkansas will host a health care systems engineering and education leadership workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation on May 20-21. The workshop will bring together leaders from more than 20 of the university health care systems engineering programs from across the country, and many will be accompanied by their graduate students — the future leaders of the profession.

“Although a few pioneering health care systems engineering programs have been around for decades, there has been an explosion of new recognition among industrial and systems engineers that we can make significant contributions to this critical national challenge,” said Ron Rardin, a professor of industrial engineering and workshop chair. “This gathering of leaders will be looking for what we can do together to advance the broad missions of health care systems engineering research and education, and what specific next steps should be pursued.”

Each participating program will give brief summaries of their ongoing activities, and the group will address the emerging spectrum of educational offerings in health care systems engineering. Attendees will discuss recommendations about what courses and degrees are needed, and how resources and experiences can be shared among academic units.

In addition, the workshop will focus on institution building and the kinds of continuing leadership events that would be useful to the health care systems engineering community. A goal of the workshop committee is for leadership summits like this workshop to become regular events so the combined efforts of the health care systems engineering programs can become more visible and have wider impact.

In addition to Rardin, who is a Distinguished Professor and holds the John and Mary Lib White Systems Integration Chair in Industrial Engineering, main sessions will be led by University of Arkansas professors Nebil Buyurgan, Ed Pohl and Ashlea Bennett. Other speakers include health care engineering employers: Vance Moore of Sisters of the Mercy ROI health care supply chain system and Marcy Harrison of the VHA, Inc., hospital network.

The workshop will be co-sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation and support from the department of industrial engineering at the University of Arkansas.