Beale Lecture 2025

Beale was a hybrid event which took place at the University of Southampton and online.

Beale Medal Winner 2024

Sally Brailsford

Talk Title: In sickness and in health: a half-life in simulation modelling

In this talk Sally will describe some of the successes and failures of her 35-year career in simulation in healthcare and her passion for getting simulation used more widely in the NHS. She came to OR relatively late in life (hence the ‘half-life’ in the title) and her previous nursing experience continues to influence her work to this day.

Sally will discuss some of the changes she have seen over the years, including the growth in model size which has culminated in the current popularity of so-called digital twins. She will challenge the usefulness of enormous models and will argue that based on her experience, small models can often be far more impactful in practice.

Sally Brailsford is Professor of Management Science at the University of Southampton. She obtained a BSc in Mathematics from Kings College London, and then worked for several years as a nurse in the NHS before obtaining an MSc and then a PhD in Operational Research from Southampton. Her research is in the area of healthcare simulation modelling: to evaluate treatments and screening programmes, or to redesign and improve service delivery. Sally has worked for over 35 years in many different disease fields including diabetes, cancer, mental health and HIV/AIDS, in addition to emergency care and end-of-life care. From 2010-19 she was chair of the EURO Working Group on OR Applied to Health Services (ORAHS), and was a founding co-Editor-in-Chief of the OR Society journal Health Systems. She is the only three-time winner of the UK OR Society's Goodeve Medal, awarded for the best paper published in the Journal of the OR Society each year. In 2016 she was made a Companion of OR by the UK OR Society in recognition of her contribution to health OR and in 2024 she was awarded the Society’s most prestigious award, the Beale Medal, for her contribution to OR research.

Sally Brailsford

Doctoral Award Winner

Elizabeth Williams

Talk Title: Linking Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics for Modelling Healthcare Services for Frail and Elderly Patients

Abstract: The increasing demand for high-quality healthcare services, driven by an ageing population with complex health needs, presents significant challenges to the National Health Service. Frail and elderly patients, in particular, often require longer hospital stays and more intensive care, placing a disproportionate strain on hospital resources such as beds and staff.

Focusing on the frail and elderly population, the research utilises a dataset of over 650,000 patient records and employs predictive analytics, specifically classification and regression trees, to forecast patient length of stay and group patients into homogeneous clusters. These predictive insights are integrated into prescriptive optimisation models—both deterministic and two-stage stochastic approaches—to strategically determine bed capacities and staffing requirements while accounting for fluctuating demand and resource constraints.

This integration of predictive and prescriptive analytics not only enhances resource allocation and operational efficiency but also provides a robust framework for responding to variations in demand and organisational changes. Scenario analyses further evaluate the system's resilience, highlighting the adaptability of the models to different contexts and challenges. The value of the stochastic solution is quantified, demonstrating significant operational benefits and a 2% cost saving compared to traditional deterministic methods.

Dr. Elizabeth Williams is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Mathematics at Cardiff University, specialising in Operational Research with a focus on healthcare systems. Elizabeth earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics (Operational Research) from Cardiff University in 2023 and holds an MMath in Mathematics from the University of South Wales (2019). Her research involves developing mathematical models and algorithms to enhance the planning and delivery of healthcare services, aiming to improve efficiency and effectiveness within the NHS. In her current role, she is embedded within Cardiff and Vale Health Board, working on projects that address challenges in hospital bed management, staffing optimisation, and system resilience.

Elizabeth Williams receiving her Doctoral Award from Gilbert Owusu