GLOBAL CONFERENCE ON HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS ENGİNEERING (GCHSE) 2014, organized by Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ) and TÜSSİDE, took place at the ITU Maçka campus between 5-8 August.
Health services have an important place in the economy of every country. Competition among healthcare organizations is increasing day by day as hospitals and clinics incorporate the systems engineering approach; because in recent years, all healthcare institutions aim to improve the quality of patient care and reduce costs.
GCHSE 2014 was held as a joint project between Istanbul Technical University, Turkey's most established engineering school, and TÜBİTAK TÜSSİDE, an institute specialized in industrial management, with the aim of drawing attention to this rising trend in the world for Turkey and underlining that an industrial engineering perspective is essential in health services.
The aim of this conference, which will be held in the coming years due to the popularity of management and quality in health services; The aim is to bring together academicians working in the field of health and managers, doctors and engineers actively working in the sector to share experiences, draw attention to innovations in the sector and provide solutions to problems. Since systems engineering in healthcare is a multidisciplinary field, it is therefore very important to ensure the cooperation of all stakeholders and organize conferences that provide the opportunity for this.
The conference, which was held at ITU Maçka under the sponsorship of Novartis and with the support of the Social Security Institution and Healthcare Informatics Association, covered information technologies (IT), modeling and simulation, training, quality control and process development in health systems, within the scope of the four (4) day conference. Topics such as health economics, e-health, ergonomics, engineering and technology management were discussed. As the keynote speaker, Sanchoy Das from the University of New Jersey gave his speech on data models and analysis in hospital processes, and the next day, Dursun Delen from Oklahoma State University gave his speech on analytics systems in healthcare and started the sessions.
TÜSSİDE supported the organization of the GCHSE conference both organizationally and scientifically. Kirstin Öztürk, Gizem Merve Şahin and Murat Çal presented studies on early warning systems in hospitals, myocardial infarction, venous thromboembolism, central line-associated infections and ventilator-associated pneumonia. In the health economics session conducted by TÜSSİDE Health Economics and Management Coordinator Kirstin Öztürk, the impact on the budget in case of loss and recovery of health, policy recommendations that need to be developed, and the processes developed by industrial engineers working in hospitals were explained. Examples from national and international hospitals were shared in the discussion environment developed on the question of why more industrial engineers are needed in hospitals.
