Exploring Health Care from Different Angles

The MIT Sloan Health Systems Initiative (HSI) uses the school’s strengths in analytics, operations, and incentives to address health care systems’ value-add barriers. HSI also brings together industry leaders with world-class researchers and students to collaborate on projects in the field that seek to improve health and lower costs.

Recent research projects

In 2024, HSI faculty members conducted exciting research with support from the HSI Research Fund, which provides funding for innovative projects that explore timely issues in health care. HSI Research Fund faculty recipients use their expertise in analytics, operations, and technology to tackle diverse topics, such as health policy, vaccine hesitancy, health care operations costs, and food-as-medicine programs, among others. Since 2019, 23 projects, totaling $2 million, have been funded.

The following recent research projects have received funding from HSI:

• HSI faculty members Dimitris Bertsimas, SM ’87, PhD ’88 (Vice Provost for Open Learning; Associate Dean for Business Analytics; Boeing Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management), and Nikos Trichakis, PhD ’11 (Associate Dean (Interim), Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and MIT Sloan; JC Penney Professor of Management) were two of the co-authors on a study published in Operations Research. The researchers utilized a framework that involved machine learning, simulation, and optimization to explore the effects of different organ allocation policy options. They worked with the Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network (OPTN) to design a new national allocation policy for lungs that is expected to make the process fairer and more equitable to patients. Bertsimas and Trichakis recently received further HSI funding to use optimization and simulation methods to design a new kidney allocation policy.
• HSI Faculty Director Joseph Doyle (Erwin H. Schell Professor of Management and Applied Economics; Professor, Applied Economics) co-authored a paper published in JAMA Internal Medicine. The researchers tracked the effectiveness of a food-as-medicine program that provided healthy meals to diabetes patients while addressing food insecurity. This intervention only slightly improved the health of the study’s participants. The researchers emphasized the need for more research examining different types of nutritional programs for people with diabetes.
• HSI faculty member David G. Rand (Erwin H. Schell Professor; Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences; Director, Applied Cooperation Initiative) co-authored a paper with Jennifer Allen, SM ’22, PhD ’24, and Duncan J. Watts that was published in Science. By using surveys and AI tools, the researchers predicted how Facebook content influenced people’s decisions on whether to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The researchers found that misleading but unflagged content was more likely than flagged information to persuade Facebook users not to get vaccinations. The findings suggest that news outlets should more carefully consider whether their headlines are misleading, and that platforms should take a more nuanced approach to content moderation.
• HSI faculty member Georgia Perakis (John C Head III Dean (Interim); Professor, Operations Management, Research, and Statistics) worked with her research team that included Dessislava Pachamanova, PhD ’02, MIT Sloan PhD student Asterios Tsiourvas, and Omar Skali Lami, MBAn ’17, PhD ’22, to build upon previous research to reduce patients’ length of stay (LOS) at the UMass Memorial Hospital Emergency Department (ED). After developing a model to optimize the use of the ED’s resources and expedite patients’ stays, the research team enhanced this model to address how inconsistencies and inequities influence patient direction within the ED. Their model helped to increase the number of patients that the ED saw and reduce patient wait times. Recently, Perakis and her team co-authored a paper in Production and Operations Management that addressed fairness in patient placement in the ED, in addition to a paper in Annals of Emergency Medicine that identified factors that contribute to patient LOS in the ED.

The HSI Lab on employee population health

In 2024, researchers at the MIT Sloan HSI Lab on Employee Population Health collaborated with various companies on projects to improve physical and mental wellness for employees. Companies that partner with that lab can use the resulting research findings to foster an environment that helps boost productivity.

The lab is currently working with Quest Diagnostics to study employee engagement in the company’s wellness programs to determine how to improve program enrollment. The research team is also piloting outreach campaigns with the goal of increased employee engagement.

Many other research projects are in process at the lab, including one with SilverCloud by Amwell, a digital mental health platform for companies. Perakis and her team are examining interactions between the platform’s clients and mental health providers to find out how to make the platform more successful.

Improving health care

Collaboratives such as the HSI Research Fund and the MIT Sloan HSI Lab on Employee Population Health enable the initiative to tackle challenges in health care from a variety of angles. HSI looks forward to continuing its innovative work to make our health care system more effective, profitable, and equitable.