Introducing nosokinetics: modelling to enhance health system management

Abstract

THE WORLD POPULATION IS AGEING and there is a crisis in hospital care. Correlation is not causation; however, there is an interesting relationship between the introduction of computer assisted hospital statistical returns and the crisis in inpatient care. This issue of Australian Health Review contains seven papers from the Nosokinetics Group?s first International Health and Social Care Modelling Conference held in Adelaide in April 2006. A broad range of practical and theoretical clinical and managerial topics were discussed at this conference. The United Kingdom-based Nosokinetics Group is a loose worldwide collaboration of mathematicians, decision scientists, clinicians and health service personnel developing and validating models that describe the process of inpatient care. Literally, nosokinetics brings together the Greek words for disease (noso) and movement (kinetics). Hence nosokinetics is the science of measuring and modelling patient flow through health and social care systems. The underlying premise of collaborating members is that the world will be a better place when the current tools used to measure the process of care are replaced by a scientifically validated approach.