Support managing population aging stress of emergency departments in a computational way

Old people usually have more complex health problems and use healthcare services more frequently than young people. It is obvious that the increasing old people both in number and proportion will challenge the emergency departments (ED). This paper firstly presents a way to quantitatively predict and explain this challenge by using simulation techniques. Then, we outline the capability of simulation for decision support to overcome this challenge. Specifically, we use simulation to predict and explain the impact of population aging over an ED. In which, a precise \{ED\} simulator which has been validated for a public hospital \{ED\} will be used to predict the behavior of an \{ED\} under population aging in the next 15 years. Our prediction shows that the stress of population aging to \{EDs\} can no longer be ignored and \{ED\} upgrade must be carefully planned. Based on this prediction, the cost and benefits of several upgrade proposals are evaluated.