Simulated annealing algorithm for scheduling problem in daily nursing cares

In most Japanese hospitals, different nurses handle the pre-assigned nursing cares in different ways, which directly affect the quality of nursing cares. To our knowledge, there has been less attention on ensuring that nurses provide nursing cares in a timely and accurate fashion. Consequently, in this paper, considering the similarities to the traditional job shop scheduling problems, we will model the daily nursing care scheduling problems and propose an efficient scheduling method based on simulated annealing algorithm. By iteratively local searching based on simulated annealing: (1) permutating the tasks from one nurse to another and (2) permutating the sub tasks handled by a nurse from its original position to another new one, the proposed method is evaluated to be applicable to the nursing care scheduling problems (providing comprehensive, coordinated and cost effective nursing cares to patients).