‘What’s the evidence?’—Towards more empirical evaluations of the impact of OR interventions in healthcare

Guillaume Lamé (1, 2, 3) , Sonya Crowe (4) , Matthew Barclay (1, 2)

1 CAM - University of Cambridge [UK]
2 THIS.institute - THIS Institute (The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute)
3 LGI - Laboratoire Génie Industriel
4 UCL - University College of London [London]

Despite an increasing number of papers reporting applications of operational research (OR) to problems in healthcare, there remains little empirical evidence of OR improving healthcare delivery in practice. Without such evidence it is harder both to justify the usefulness of OR to a healthcare audience and to learn and continuously improve our approaches. To progress, we need to build the evidence-base on whether and how OR improves healthcare delivery through careful empirical evaluation. This position paper reviews evaluation standards in healthcare improvement research and dispels some common myths about evaluation. It highlights the current lack of robust evaluation of healthcare OR and makes the case for addressing this. It then proposes possible ways for building better empirical evaluations of OR interventions in healthcare.

Mots clés: Health Quality and Evaluation; Healthcare Improvement Research; Impact

Domaines: Santé publique et épidémiologie; Recherche opérationnelle [math.OC]; Gestion et management; Autre

Guillaume Lamé, Sonya Crowe, Matthew Barclay. ‘What’s the evidence?’—Towards more empirical evaluations of the impact of OR interventions in healthcare. Health Systems, 2022, 11 (1), pp.59-67. ⟨10.1080/20476965.2020.1857663⟩. ⟨hal-03035075⟩