Health Care Management Science Special Issue
Management Science in the Fight Against Covid-19
As our societies re-orient and mobilise to face the threat of Covid-19, Management Scientists have a critical role to play in supporting decision making and ensuring that the economy continues to operate as safely, sustainably and efficiently as possible, given the ongoing need to disrupt transmission of the virus. Management scientists already have a great deal of experience in planning healthcare capacity, in analysing and improving medical supply chains, in configuring clinical networks involving both acute and community care, and in scheduling mobile healthcare workers, such as ambulances but also paramedics and health visitors: the threat of Covid-19 is requiring decision makers to revisit their planning in all of these areas, in the face of drastically increased demand for care for Covid-19 patients and changed demand patterns for other forms of care. The need for the rollout of large-scale testing and contact tracing poses challenges which have been relatively little studied: what level and what mix of testing is required and where should test centres be located and how should tests be delivered to patients? how can contact tracing be optimally delivered, using what mix of human resource and digital technologies, and how should resources be deployed, given that the demand for contact tracing is driven by outbreaks and so is intrinsically highly variable? Widespread social distancing also demands scientific investigation from the point of view of our discipline: as many systems in our society require intensive concentrations of and high throughput in human beings (either as staff or as customers), social distancing threatens to radically reduce capacity, prompting the need to re-think pre-pandemic work processes, organisational structures and stimulating the development and rollout of transformative technologies. Finally, management scientists, with their strong decision focus, are well-placed to help capture and integrate findings and insights from other disciplines, such as epidemiology, economics and behavioural science: particularly as there are so many prominent uncertainties in the trajectory of the epidemic, the development of treatment and preventive technologies and the responses of the political systems in the various countries of the world; and also in light of the need to balance so many competing priorities, such as the need to protect people's lives and health, the need to protect the economy, the need to guard against the risk of future waves of infection, and concern for the worst off.
This special issue welcomes papers on all of the above topics and others relating to the role which Management Science can play in the fight against Covid-19. Papers can be submitted at any time prior to 31stOctober 2020 and will be assigned to reviewers and reviewed as they are submitted. Manuscripts should conform to the journal's Submission Guidelines. Submissions should be made should be made through the journal's Editorial Managersite and authors wishing their paper to be considered for the Special issue should select Covid-19as the article type.
So as to ensure that research is made available in a timely fashion, reviewers will be asked to choose from accept, minor revisions or reject options, in order to avoid papers becoming tied up in major revisions. Papers will be published online on acceptance, in advance of a planned special issue date of March 2021. We encourage authors to post their papers in open repositories (e.g. ArXiv, Researchgate, SSRN etc.) during the review process.
To facilitate rapid and high quality turnaround, the special issue will operate with an expanded international editorial team, which is listed below. Authors should indicate in a cover letter the editor whom they think would be best placed to handle their paper.
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Editors
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Institution
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Country
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Alec Morton *
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University of Strathclyde
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UK
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David Hutton
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University of Michigan
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USA
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Ebru Bish *
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Virginia Tech
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USA
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Ed Kaplan
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Yale University
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USA
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Itamar Megiddo *
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University of Strathclyde
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UK
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Jianbin Li
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Huazhong University of Science and Technology
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China
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Jie Song
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Peking University
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China
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Julie Higle
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University of Southern California
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USA
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Marion Rauner
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University of Vienna
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Austria
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Mart Janssen
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Sanquin
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Netherlands
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Monica Oliveira
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University of Lisbon
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Portugal
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Na Geng
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Shanghai Jiaotong University
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China
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Roberto Aringhieri
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University of Turin
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Italy
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Sally Brailsford
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University of Southampton
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UK
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Sarang Deo
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Indian School of Business
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India
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Shankar Prinja
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PGIMER
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India
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Sheetal Silal
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University of Cape Town
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South Africa
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Silvio Hamacher
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PUC-Rio
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Brazil
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Weifen Zhuang*
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Xiamen University
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China
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* coordinating editors
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Ebru Bish
Associate Professor
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg VA
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