Home healthcare demand and cost is increasing all over the world. Researchers are attracted by this issue that presents interesting customized scheduling and routing aspects with multiple resource and temporal constraints. The problem is a variant of the vehicle routing problem with time windows and synchronized visits (VRPTWSyn). The challenge is to optimize the assignment of visits to home caregivers and the sequence of visits execution. In this paper, a genetic algorithm and a hybrid genetic algorithm are provided and evaluated using a benchmark dataset available in literature. Numerical results show that the hybrid genetic algorithm outperforms the existing algorithm. It is observed that the genetic algorithm reaches 13 optimal values and improves 6 others, while hybrid genetic algorithm reaches all best-known solutions and gives 16 new best-known solutions with lower computation time.
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Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for Home Healthcare routing and scheduling problem
Semantic Scholar · Medicine · 2019
Abstract
Home healthcare demand and cost is increasing all over the world. Researchers are attracted by this issue that presents interesting customized scheduling and routing aspects with multiple resource and temporal constraints. The problem is a variant of the vehicle routing problem with time windows and synchronized visits (VRPTWSyn). The challenge is to optimize the assignment of visits to home caregivers and the sequence of visits execution. In this paper, a genetic algorithm and a hybrid genetic algorithm are provided and evaluated using a benchmark dataset available in literature. Numerical results show that the hybrid genetic algorithm outperforms the existing algorithm. It is observed that the genetic algorithm reaches 13 optimal values and improves 6 others, while hybrid genetic algorithm reaches all best-known solutions and gives 16 new best-known solutions with lower computation time.