Simio's Next Student Competition Announced!

Sewickley, PA - After the widely successful student competition last semester, Simio is proud to announce their Fall 2015 Student Competition. This semester features a subject that is critical to many people today -- healthcare effectiveness. This problem will not only challenge student model-building skills, but also require some creativity, project management, and even video production and presentation skills.

The summary of the Fall 2015 problem is:

Urgent Care Centers of Simio (UCCS) owns a number of urgent care centers across the country that provide patient care on a walk-in basis, typically during regular business hours as well as evenings and weekends. UCCS is generally equipped to treat conditions seen in primary care practices such as infections, flu, minor injuries, and simple fractures. UCCS are staffed by nurses, physicians and physician assistants, and specialists like an orthopedic specialist. 

UCCS facilities include areas for patient registration, waiting, and triage as well as multiple exam / procedure rooms of various types. Patient demand varies not only by time of day and day of week, but also varies across their different centers. UCCS wants to determine the best general layout, staffing, room allocation, and other operating methodologies. UCCS would also like to evaluate how increasing patient incentives to pre-schedule for exams and other minor sicknesses could potentially reduce the staffing required.

Since it is desired to use the same model to optimize centers in many cities, the simulation model must be data driven to easily modify the patient demographics and experiment with the facility and staff configuration and optimization. The proposal must be “sold” to the UCCS board, so 3d animation and clarity of the results is particularly important.

We believe that students will find participation to be both interesting and valuable. This year we are introducing special awards for the best novice team to give more chances for students taking their first simulation course to win! Sign up information will be announced later in August 2015!

In the last competition, Simio had a total of 255 students participate. These students came from 22 schools throughout 10 countries. The competition problem was loosely based off an actual transportation logistics problem at Shell Oil Company. View the results here.