Improving Patient Flow Through Axiomatic Design of Hospital Emergency Departments

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityIn response to crowding in hospital emergency departments (ED), efforts have been made to increase patient flow through the Fast Track (FT). The use of FT, however, has not always been accompanied by an increase in the overall patient flow, sometimes leaving the FT underutilized. We find that this is mainly caused by the current practice of assigning patients to FT based only on the Emergency Severity Index. One index for two functional requirements results in a coupling between prioritizing of patients and encouraging the fast flow of them. By introducing a new index for patient flow, we could uncouple this design problem and significantly decrease the overall patient waiting time (~50%) compared to that of the existing use of FT.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Compan

Demonstration of dispersive rarefaction shocks in hollow elliptical cylinder chains

We report an experimental and numerical demonstration of dispersive rarefaction shocks (DRS) in a 3D-printed soft chain of hollow elliptical cylinders. We find that, in contrast to conventional nonlinear waves, these DRS have their lower amplitude components travel faster, while the higher amplitude ones propagate slower. This results in the backward-tilted shape of the front of the wave (the rarefaction segment) and the breakage of wave tails into a modulated waveform (the dispersive shock segment). Examining the DRS under various impact conditions, we find the counter-intuitive feature that the higher striker velocity causes the slower propagation of the DRS. These unique features can be useful for mitigating impact controllably and efficiently without relying on material damping or plasticity effects