Medical Office Simulation Tool

I built a tool not to simulate a single office, but to build a representation of any kind of operation in a flexible, modular way. It included ways to specify an office layout, schedules for patients, staff, rooms, and special equipment, and rules for procedures and event durations.

The simulation considered all of the administrative activity (phone calls in and out, taking and changing appointments, communicating with third parties including insurance companies) as well at treatment, break, and support activity by different types of personnel. The model simulated time and materials and costs for every activity so the economic impact of every proposed change could be evaluated.

This framework was built on a core simulation written in SLX, short for Simulation Language with eXtensibility. This is a C-based language that incorporates discrete-event simulation constructs. This core read in all of the parametric and scenario data and produced output files that tabulated summarized results and animation information.

The animation files were read by a companion product called Proof, which would allow the user to interactively view and control the animation. The image at the top of this page shows what that can look like. These processes were embedded in a wrapper written in C++. It allowed a user to enter all information about parameters, schedules, and configurations and then fire off simulation runs and view and compare results.