Doctor-Patient Combined Matching Problem and its Solving Algorithms

“Difficult to see a doctor” and prominent contradictions between doctors and patients in large public hospitals have become an urgent research topic in China. In this paper, we propose a multi-patient treatment mode (MTM) to improve medical efficiency and patient satisfaction. Based on the MTM, a problem named the doctor-patient combined matching problem (DPCMP) is proposed and can be described by a two-stage process: (1) The patients are grouped according to similar disease symptoms. (2) How to capture an optimal matching scheme form the grouped patients? Therefore, to solve the aforementioned problem, a mathematical model of the DPCMP is constructed, and several improved ant colony optimization algorithms are designed. Finally, certain examples verify the effectiveness and good performances of the proposed methods.