Statistical and Requirement Analysis for an IDM Tool for Emergency Department Simulation

Emergency Departments (ED) are spaces prone to congestion due to the high number of patients. This problem, known as overcrowding, has negative effect on patient waiting time. In order to find a solution, analysis of the flow of patients through Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is a relevant approach that models the operation of a system through a sequence of events. This technique relies on high-quality input data which needs to be previously managed in a complete process known as Input Data Management (IDM). The objective of this research is to present our progress in the development of a software application to efficiently automate the IDM process required for DES of ED. Preliminary findings and results presented in this paper include the problem definition, the evaluation of required statistical methods, and the gathering of specific requirements from a case study with real data. Based on these results, this paper describes the initial architecture of a software application that satisfies the identified requirements.