An ASP-based Solution to the Chemotherapy Treatment Scheduling problem

The problem of scheduling chemotherapy treatments in oncology clinics is a complex problem, given that the solution has to satisfy (as much as possible) several requirements such as the cyclic nature of chemotherapy treatment plans, maintaining a constant number of patients, and the availability of...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theory and practice of logic programming Vol. 21; no. 6; pp. 835 - 851
Main Authors: DODARO, CARMINE, GALATÁ, GIUSEPPE, GRIONI, ANDREA, MARATEA, MARCO, MOCHI, MARCO, PORRO, IVAN
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: 01.11.2021
ISSN:1471-0684, 1475-3081
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The problem of scheduling chemotherapy treatments in oncology clinics is a complex problem, given that the solution has to satisfy (as much as possible) several requirements such as the cyclic nature of chemotherapy treatment plans, maintaining a constant number of patients, and the availability of resources, for example, treatment time, nurses, and drugs. At the same time, realizing a satisfying schedule is of upmost importance for obtaining the best health outcomes. In this paper we first consider a specific instance of the problem which is employed in the San Martino Hospital in Genova, Italy, and present a solution to the problem based on Answer Set Programming (ASP). Then, we enrich the problem and the related ASP encoding considering further features often employed in other hospitals, desirable also in S. Martino, and/or considered in related papers. Results of an experimental analysis, conducted on the real data provided by the San Martino Hospital, show that ASP is an effective solving methodology also for this important scheduling problem.
ISSN:1471-0684
1475-3081
DOI:10.1017/S1471068421000363