Domain-Specific Modelling Languages for Participatory Agent-Based Modelling in Healthcare

Hospitals need to look into operational interventions to keep up with increasing patient numbers, and the threats of infectious diseases. Changes such as new ward layouts, staff allocations, testing schemes, admission pathways, etc., need to be considered to improve patient flow and safety. Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) has promising potential for simulating these types of interventions in hospital settings without interfering with real-world operations. While this approach to simulation has seen great academic support, the acceptance of these simulations in practice is still relatively low. Typical software development processes, and the use of general-purpose programming languages, make simulation implementations largely inaccessible to their intended users. Explaining model behaviour becomes challenging, and domain users are unable to modify or develop their own models without handing over to software developers. We propose that participatory modelling, aided by a suite of domain-specific modelling languages can help resolve these issues. We outline a set of DSMLs to involve users directly in model development with the aim of improving implementation comprehensibility, improving model development times, and improving overall simulation acceptance in a healthcare setting.