Modelling the reconfiguration of acute and community health services

This PhD studentship will play a pivotal role in supporting CVUHB's "Shaping Our Future Wellbeing", an ambitious 10-year, system-wide plan that is set to transform their services for the better. At the heart of the plan is the desire to achieve joined-up care based upon a 'home first' approach, empowering Cardiff and Vale citizens to feel responsible for their own health, and thus avoiding harm, waste and variation in services to make them more efficient and sustainable for the future.

Operational Research (OR) approaches have been successfully applied to a range of health and wellbeing services, and this PhD studentship is an exciting opportunity to develop novel system-wide OR models and approaches to help create a lasting impact that will deliver outcomes that really matter to patients and the public.

As part of the 10-year plan, CVUHB need to move a range of services across the region, within existing community settings or by creating new hubs. This has major implications on the way the healthcare system will function, how capacity is planned, how pathways are structured, and transport and logistics operate. Modelling how the dynamics of the healthcare system will change is a fundamental step to realising the strategy and will be the focus of this innovative PhD. Specifically, you will:

Assess the population health needs by carrying out an analysis on how these are met and what is required to ensure the healthcare system meets them in the future;
Build stochastic OR decision-support tools that model patient flows and service design both dynamically and geospatially;
Use the developed models to perform cost-benefit evaluations and to make recommendations on how to optimally configure services.