title: A resident's behavior simulation model for nursing home healthcare services.
abstract: The design of elaborate healthcare services is becoming increasingly difficult in today's nursing home. In this work, we develop a model that simulates the nursing home residents' behavior to assist the facility planners in making fair and feasible management. Since a series of activities constituted one behavior, every activity is performed in a time interval and then starts next activity consequently. Whether the resident's activity posed at any particular state, its future behavior is always having the same occurrence probability regardless of how it positioned in that state. This simulation model used exponential distribution to produce the stochastic activity interval for each activity. The activity transitions can be formalized through a randomized probability with respect to each activity frequency (AF). In the simulation model, the characteristics of nursing home residents' activities can be generated to simulate a large scaled resident's behavior and aid the facility managers in providing higher quality of healthcare services.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chih-Yen
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Chiang
authors.forename: Steen J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: Chia-Tai
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Chan
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000368:Aged; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D015444:Exercise; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005853:Geriatrics / Q000379:methods; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D007899:Leisure Activities; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009068:Movement; D009735:Nursing Homes / Q000458:organization & administration*; D011336:Probability; D013624:Taiwan; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Healthcare Services; Nursing Home; Residents' Behavior; Simulation Model