Enhancing Health Care Infrastructure Resiliency Through an Agent-Based Simulation Methodology

Healthcare systems face demanding challenges due to natural and human-generated threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and cyber-attacks, which might severely compromise health service quality. To improve system resilience, decision-makers would need intelligent tools for efficient scarce resource allocation. This contribution explores an agent-based simulation model that intends to capture a part of the complexity of healthcare systems, including their interdependencies with information and communication systems. This preliminary model enables to evaluate system exposure to given risks and it allows to assess decision alternatives to enhance their resilience, by utilizing a “simulation-based optimization” approach. The model is designed to be parameterizable to adapt itself to different operation scenarios and it facilitates the monitoring of relevant performance health indicators over the population. A case-based validation approach is used as an example to illustrate the feasibility and versatility of the proposed approach.