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TITLE: Optimal Policies in Sequential Medical Decision Making
SPEAKER: Dr. Lisa Maillart
ABSTRACT:
We present a variety of sequential medical decision making problems, both from the perspective of an individual patient as well as from the perspective of a healthcare provider.
From the individual's perspective, we analyze Markov models of organ accept/decline decisions and breast cancer screening decisions. More specifically, in the former setting, we provide an overview of results for individuals entertaining liver offers from cadaveric and/or living donors under various levels of waiting list transparency, including: when the patient should accept, when the patient should update her status, in which locations the patient should join the waiting list and how the performance of the optimal policy is impacted by the degree to which waiting list information is made public. In the latter setting, we formulate a partially observed Markov chain model that captures age-based dynamics not previously considered simultaneously, and use it to evaluate a broad range of policies resulting in a menu of "efficient" breast cancer screening policies.
Finally, we touch on the management of expedited placement livers both from the perspective of a UNOS procurement coordinator as well as the perspective of a transplant center. In particular, for the procurement coordinator, we consider the questions of: when and how many standard offers to extend, and when to initiate expedited placement. For a transplant center to which an expedited organ is offered, we consider the question of which (if any) of its patients should receive the organ.
BIO:
Lisa Maillart is an Assistant Professor in the Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to joining the faculty at Pitt, she served on the faculty at Case Western Reserve University. She received her M.S. and B.S. in industrial and systems engineering from Virginia Tech, and her Ph.D. in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan. Her primary research interest is in sequential decision making under uncertainty, with applications in medical decision making and maintenance optimization. She is a member of INFORMS, SMDM and IIE.
