Health systems engineering

Health systems engineering is an academic discipline where researchers and practitioners treat health care industry as complex systems, and further identify and apply engineering applications in health care systems. This term was first seen in late 70s (Saxton GO 1979). People who work in this field are often called hospital engineers, management engineers, industrial engineers, or health systems engineers. Many engineering applications, such as optimization, decision making, human factors engineering, quality engineering, information technology and communication, and knowledge discovery are currently employed in varied levels of health systems. More detailed information can be seen in joint-report by National Academic of Engineering and Institute of Medicine, titled "Building a Better Delivery System:A New Engineering/Health Care Partnership".

See also