Title: The necessity of optimization in healthcare Speaker: Tomas Nordlander, SINTEF, Norway When: Wednesday 23 January, 11h30 Where: IDSIA meeting room - Galleria 1, Manno Abstract: There exists a range of challenges in healthcare, where optimization methods could assist. We will present some of these challenges from a Norwegian perspective and our struggle of convincing the healthcare professionals about benefits of optimization. Also, we will share our experience of working with Norwegian hospitals in optimization projects. This along with describing our different projects (strategic, tactical and operational) that we worked with, such as: nurse rostering, surgery scheduling, rescheduling, shift design, master surgery schedule design, competence building, and patient transport. Here we describe each projects core task, the method applied and the response from the hospitals.