Simulation in Healthcare
Students learn how engineering design is applied to healthcareCopyright 2004 Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399 USA. All rights reserved.
Students learn how engineering design is applied to solve healthcare problems by using an engineering tool called simulation. While engineering design is commonly used to study and design everything from bridges, factories, airports to space shuttles, the use of engineering design to study healthcare administration and delivery is a relatively new concept.
Though at its core healthcare is all about biology and chemistry, the actual delivery and administration of healthcare via a complex network of doctors, hospitals and laboratories is an engineering problem. Established engineering tools, such as simulation, which has been used effectively to find solutions to global manufacturing and distribution problems, can be put to use to improve healthcare.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Explain how simulation can be applied to improve healthcare.
- Define simulation and explain its use in the testing step of the engineering design process.
- Apply simulation to solve a healthcare delivery problem.
- Define a simple design problem that includes specified constraints on materials, time, or cost.