Editorial: Modelling and simulation in health care systems

Increasingly, changes in population demography, technological and medical advancements, and others, have affected the paradigm of health and social care systems worldwide. These changes have direct effect on organisation and working of health care systems whether they are hospitals, general practitioners or long-term care. An efficient and effective health care system is crucial for high quality of the life in the society. In recent times, major challenges faced by health care systems are accurate diagnosis, operational issues (such as bottlenecks, low throughput, low resource utilisation), hospital redesign, workforce planning and scheduling, streamlining of patient flow, performance management, disease monitoring, and health care technology assessment. Over the last 10 years, operations research and management science scholars have implemented their innovative techniques and knowledge to improve health care systems. However, it still has many untouched and unresolved issues, requiring attention. Along with this, there are many techniques that have been successfully implemented and tested in other sectors that can be employed in this area for major improvements.