HSMA: The Discrete Event Simulation (DES) Playground

Summary

The Discrete Event Simulation (DES) playground is an interactive web application designed to teach the fundamental concepts of DES to absolute beginners. Used to support a range of training sessions, it can also be used as a standalone tool to introduce yourself to why DES is useful, building up from a very simple to a more complex model and allowing you to explore the impact of changing a range of parameters. DES is used for building simulations of pathways and services, allowing ‘what-if’ questions to be tested.

Rating: Gold

App that has been tested in practice with reasonably large groups and shown itself to be stable. The underlying model is based on code written by an academic with extensive experience in simulation, and is itself based on a published example system.

Atlas Entry authored by: | Sammi Rosser (Link) |

The Health Service Modelling Associates (HSMA) programme provides a Discrete Event Simulation playground, introducing some of the key concepts of DES.

Beginning with exploring how we can realistically simulate variable arrivals…

It allows you to then explore the impact of changing parameters…

Providing you with a range of interactive outputs to explore.

It then walks you through adding additional complexity to the model, talking through resources, multi-step pathways and optional steps.

It also provides a visual, intuitive demonstration of DES with the vidigi package.

You can try it out below, or click here to open the playground in a new window.

Tip

Has this piqued your curiousity? Head over to the Atlas entry on DES to find out more, including a range of training materials and health service models.