Seminar Series | Trauma Care: Challenges and Opportunities

Speaker: Pratik Parikh, University of Louisville

Title: Trauma Care: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract: Trauma injury (due to motor vehicle crash, falls, and gunshots) is the #1 cause of death among US citizens <45 years old and #3 overall across all ages, with an economic burden of $671 billion annually. Recent literature suggests that geographical maldistribution of Trauma Centers (TCs), and the resultant increase in the access time to the nearest TC, could impact patient safety and increase disability or mortality. In this talk we will discuss our collaboration with the Trauma Division at a Midwestern US state. Starting with the typical process of how care is provided to a trauma victim at the scene, we will briefly discuss key strategic and operational challenges. One of the strategic challenges is to determine the number and location of major and intermediate TCs to improve patient safety. We will share insights derived from testing our approach on real data from this state. We expect that our proposed approach will help state trauma decision makers in (i) benchmarking their current network against our optimal solution and (ii) conducting ‘what-if’ analysis to evaluate the viability of a proposal (from a local health system) to upgrade a non-TC to a TC. Opportunities for future research in this area will also be shared.

Biography: Dr. Pratik J. Parikh is the Department Chair and Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Louisville. He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech (2006). Dr. Parikh’s research in data analytics and optimization with applications in supply chain, retail, and healthcare has been supported by over $3 million in grants/contracts from the National Science Foundation, the Veterans Affairs, state of OH, and industry. For his contributions towards research, teaching, and service, he was honored with the IISE-LSC Division Teaching Award, IISE Global Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award, INFORMS Volunteer Service Award, several university awards, and the Dayton Forty Under 40 Award. He currently serves as the Technical VP for the Technical Operations Board at IISE and an Associate Editor for IISE Transactions.