Chemotherapy Treatment Scheduling via Answer Set Programming

The problem of planning and scheduling chemotherapy treatments in oncology clinics is a complex problem, given that the solution has to satisfy (as much as possible) several requirements such as the cyclic nature of chemotherapy treatment plans, and the availability of resources, e.g. treatment time, nurses, and pharmacy quantities. At the same time, realizing a satisfying schedule is of upmost importance for obtaining the best health outcomes. In this paper we present a solution to the problem based on Answer Set Programming (ASP), that recently proved to be a consistent methodology for solving complex scheduling problems involving optimization. Results of an experimental analysis, conducted on benchmarks with realistic sizes and parameters, show that ASP is a suitable solving methodology also for this important scheduling problem.

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