Process optimization in the hospital environment: a systematic review of the literature and results' analysis

This paper presents a systematic review of the literature relating to the usage of engineering tools and methods for increasing the efficiency of hospitals and their internal processes, with a particular attention to the management of operating rooms. By means of specific queries made on the Scopus database, a sample of 44 papers describing the usage of technical tools for process optimization in the healthcare context has been retrieved. Descriptive statistics are proposed to delineate the trend of the research in time and to identify the top journals by number of terms of publications. Then, a more in depth analysis has been made, for classifying the papers in terms of their primary focus, tool and performance parameters used for evaluating the efficiency of the system. From the set of analyses made, useful indications are derived for a practical usage of the tools identified, as well as interesting suggestions for future research activities. (C) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.