Abstract
The global trend today is to shift the care burden away from the acute care and long-term care, which are costly and afford a poor quality of life, to community care and primary care, which are more conducive to active aging, more cost-effective and afford a higher quality of life. Clinical studies and health economics research have repeatedly demonstrated that appropriate and coordinated care in the community can reduce both the rate of hospitalisation and the need for institutionalized long-term care.

However, the prevailing practice in HK is such that acute care and long-term care institutions receive most of the financial and human resources, even though it is well researched that investment in community-based care is more cost-effective for the active aging of the population. Healthcare in HK have been governed by two government departments through two systems, i.e.,  Social Welfare Department and Health and Food Bureau. As a result, elderly care systems in HK are fragmented and lacking effective coordination.

In this talk, we will present several projects towards developing a data-and-service analytics approach to integrated elderly care.  Specifically, our studies are intended to address the following two thrust areas: First, prioritise elderly care delivery: use data science tools to develop an integrated registry of at-risk elderly in selected areas and their case history and care needs. Second, optimise resource allocation: use analytics such as simulation and optimisation tools to balance supply-demand dynamics and to ensure that resources are most effectively distributed and coordinated between inpatient and outbound (medical and social) services in the community.

Biography
Prof. Frank Chen is the Head and Chair Professor of Department of Management Sciences at CityU.  His current research interests include healthcare management, supply-chain modeling, analysis of inventory systems, and sustainable supply chains. Prior to joining City University of Hong Kong in 2012, Prof. Chen was on the faculty of NUS Business School at National University of Singapore (1997-2001) and the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2001-2012). He holds a bachelor degree in Engineering, master degree in Economics, and doctoral degree in Management from Tsinghua University (Beijing), the University of Waterloo, and the University of Toronto, respectively.

Dr. Eman Leung joined the Department of Management Sciences, College of Business, CityU in December 2014. He received his PhD and undergraduate degrees from the University of Toronto, Canada. His research interests include biostatistics, public health, healthcare management sciences and implementation sciences. His area of research bridges between public health research in clinical risk analytics and operations research on data-driven resource allocation. Before joining CityU, Dr. Leung was responsible for managing the quality and risk portfolio of a teaching hospital in Toronto. He has also served as a data scientist, first in the University of California San Francisco and then the University of Toronto.

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