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In this project, a program was created with the aim of helping the management team at the emergency department at the university hospital in Umeå, Norrlands Universitetssjukhus, make informed decisions regarding the scheduling of doctors at the emergency department. Several graphical visualizations of the scheduling and the patient load were made to help the management team get a better overview of the staff. A mathematical model was developed that divide doctors into different levels of productivity and use the schedule to simulate the patient flow. The aim was to help the management team visualize and understand the scheduled doctor capacity, the patient load, and how the two interact.

The model of doctors with a constant capacity can recreate the general trends of the patient flow in an average week. The recreated patient flow is not quantitatively perfect, but close enough that some qualitative insights may be gained from it. The program can then use this simulation to suggest a better staffing, aiming to minimize the total number of patient hours spent at the ED.

This model is unable to recreate the complexities of an emergency department. It cannot recreate the patient load at both the highest and the lowest points at the same time. Several improvements can be made in the future to improve the fit of the model, for example by increasing the accuracy at the low points. However, some insights can be gained from this first iteration and it will hopefully be useful as a first proof of concept of what can be done with interactive data visualizations and simulations.