Nurse rostering is a complicated problem that involves assignment of shifts to nurses with respect to coverage constraints, skill categories, labour legislations, contractual agreements, personal preferences and further criteria. The workload is usually fluctuating in hospitals and the problem properties differ among countries, hospitals and wards. The problem properties also change in time with the introduction of new labour legislations and contractual agreements.
The objective of this project was to come up with a generic model and corresponding solution methods to tackle the nurse rostering problem instances in Belgian hospitals. The resulting solution method is be implemented and deployed in Belgian hospitals. The system aims for an automated nurse rostering procedure that produces higher quality rosters within less amount of time.
This innovation project has been carried out between 2006 November and 2008 April. It was funded by IWT (Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders).
Research papers on the project are due to appear.
Please click here to access real world test data that complements the research paper "Local Search Neighbourhoods to Deal with a Novel Nurse Rostering Model", accepted to Patat’08 conference. The package contains XSD files for problem instance description and penalty report, the input, sample output and report files from different ward-scenario couples. The data consists of nurse rostering problem instances gathered from Belgian hospitals.