Emergency care chains  

PICA research started around emergency care chains, in which the patient flow through the emergency department (ED), operating room (OR) and intensive care unit (ICU) is crucial. 

  Some characteristics of this process:

1. From both patient and organisational perspective critical
2. Large numbers of patients enter the ED and OR
3. The incidence of refused admissions due to unavailability of beds
4. Large fluctuations in arrival intensity at ED and ICU
5. Both the OR and ICU are cost-drivers and are often seen as bottleneck 
6. The available resources within emergency care are dependent
   
   

Mother and child

At the moment PICA is starting up a second research track in the care for the pregnant, mother and child. This area has several resource allocation and delay issues to investigate. For example, think about the availability of the delivery rooms, PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) and NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) beds.

Typical research topics

1. Capacity planning and management
2. Scheduling and workforce planning
3. Workforce and workload models
4. Decision support systems
5. Queueing models
6. Simulation

Divers

PICA also has experience on the field of:

1. Call center management
2. Forecasting