Research Aim
As populations age, healthcare and care systems are shifting from hospital-centered care toward community and home-based care. In home care, a limited number of staff members must visit many users while considering visit time windows, travel time, work conditions, and continuity of care.
This research is at an early stage. Our goal is to develop decision-support methods that combine mathematical optimization with practical feedback from care managers, helping create schedules that are both efficient and usable in the field.
Visit frequency, time windows, travel time, staff availability, and continuity of assigned staff are represented as scheduling conditions.
The schedule is formulated as an optimization problem that considers visit order and travel time.
Feedback from managers is used to refine schedules and support practical decision-making.
Future Direction
We aim to build a scheduling support system that helps care managers compare alternatives, identify difficult constraints, and adjust plans according to the needs of users, staff, and local care providers.