AI-Powered Queueing Revolutionizes Telemedicine with Smarter Scheduling and Reduced Costs
August 27, 2025
Intro: A new Advanced Queueing Mechanism (AQM) powered by AI for telemedicine triage and doctor assignment promises smarter scheduling and lower costs, backed by real data and simulations.
Methodology: The approach fuses AI triage classification, reinforcement learning (Q-learning), time-dependent differential equations, and classical queueing theory to model triage and doctor queues.
Context: There is a literature gap in real-time, adaptable telemedicine queue management that ties assessments directly to pricing dynamics and scheduling.
Data and setting: Validation uses 48 hours of DHRC Hospital Jaipur data covering patient arrivals, triage levels, and doctor availability.
Cost efficiency and validation: A cost-benefit analysis, paired t-tests, and simulations indicate AI-driven scheduling reduces wait times and improves resource utilization.
Research aim: Develop an Advanced Queueing Mechanism (AQM) integrated with AI-driven smart scheduling to optimize triage, doctor assignment, resource use, and overall costs.
Q-learning specifics: The update rule and parameters—learning rate alpha, discount factor gamma, and exploration rate epsilon—drive adaptive doctor allocation across Emergency, Moderate, and Routine queues.
Implementation: A Python-based methodology simulates queues, applies Q-learning, and evaluates performance across scenarios.
Mathematical formulation: Stepwise ODE-based queue dynamics for triage and doctor queues, with a RL component that uses state, action, reward, policy, and Q-function; rewards reflect wait time, delays, and rejections.
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