Health and Social Care Simulation

As the population gets older, and technology is more expensive, the cost of health and social care is going up and new techniques are needed to understand the most effective and affordable interventions to meet the health and social care needs of the population.

Simulation techniques model health and social care systems to enable planners, clinicians, analysts and managers to understand the most efficient and effective way of planning a service, taking into account variability and changes in demand and informing evidence-based decision-making.

Scenario Generator is the first and only simulation software tool for strategic planning that enables design and simulation of care pathways within whole health and social care systems. This supports strategic decision-making and the planning, commissioning and design of new models of care.

Scenario Generator has been developed through a public-private partnership between SIMUL8 Corporation, the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and a number of NHS and local government partners in the UK.

Scenario Generator is designed to:

• Replicate the existing service configuration and care pathways in a health and social care system
• Enable scenarios to be developed that reflect changes in population, prevalence, service configuration and capacity, and models of care
• Simulate scenarios to examine the impact of those changes on flow, capacity, end-to-end transaction times (including delays and waits) and cost across the whole system
• Indicate where changes to one pathway might have impacts elsewhere in the whole system

November 2011 - SIMUL8 simulation software helps plan integrated care in the UK
NHS Gloucestershire and Gloucestershire County Council have done some great work in health and social care integration.
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March 2011 - Scenario Generator 4.0 Released
Scenario Generator now includes social care pathways, prepopulated with social care prevalence data from POPPI and PANSI, and health and social care costs data taken from PSSRU Health and Social Care Costs.
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January 2011 - Computer models could help NHS save £20bn
The NHS could use computer simulations to help find £20bn savings needed by April 2015. (HSJ Article by Crispin Dowler, 6th Jan 2011).
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