Operations Research

Organizations are focused on improving productivity and profits. Improving employee engagement—through policies like workplace flexibility—is an example of strategies that many organizations are implementing to positively influence productivity. Operations research (OR) helps to make better decisions in complex scenarios by the application of a set of advanced analytical methods. It couples theories, results, and theorems of mathematics, statistics, and probability with its own theories and algorithms for problem-solving. OR is an analytical method of problem-solving and decision-making that is useful in the management of organizations. The process of OR can be broadly broken down into the following steps: identifying a problem that needs to be solved, constructing a model around the problem that resembles the real world and variables, using the model to derive solutions to the problem, testing each solution on the model and analyzing its success, and implementing the solution to the actual problem. There are three primary characteristics of all OR efforts: Optimization, simulation, and probability and statistics. OR provides a more powerful approach to decision-making than ordinary software and data analytics tools. OR has been successfully used all over the world in various health programs such as family planning, HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria control programs to name a few. Its role in causing improvement in various health programs and the development of policies has been acknowledged globally. Five key challenges that every OR implementation should be aware of from the beginning are: A champion, a critical issue, cultural insight, data quality, and expectation management. OR uses advanced analytical methods to better understand complex systems and aid in decision-making. OR uses a wide range of problem-solving techniques and computational methods, including computer simulation, mathematical optimization, statistics, and decision analyses, to help improve the operations of organizations. OR is particularly useful for analyzing complex global health issues. The four main application areas of global health are: (1) Health systems and operations, (2) clinical medicine, (3) public health, and (4) health innovations—from the local to global level. Next, health equity, which is integral to the concept of global health and transcends all four application areas, is explored as a separate overarching theme using a subset of included studies. Health equity is not only a topic of growing interest globally but is compelling to explore through an OR lens.