Grand
River
Hospital
has
a
problem
with
pumps.
Mahsa
Tavassoli
is
trying
to
help
the
hospital
solve
it.
At
$5,000
a
piece,
IV
diffusion
pumps
are
too
expensive
for
each
ward
to
have
a
few
sitting
in
a
storeroom.
But
a
floating
inventory
system
has
drawbacks,
too:
when
a
patient
needs
a
pump,
it
is
sometimes
a
scramble
to
find
one.
Staff
try
to
avoid
this
by
tucking
pumps
away
–
a
solution
that
actually
makes
the
problem
worse.
Enter
Mahsa.
As
a
graduate
student
in
management
sciences,
she
spent
four
months
at
Grand
River
studying
the
matter.
The
hospital
was
considering
fitting
each
pump
with
a
radio-frequency
ID
tag,
which
would
track
its
location
–
and
indeed,
Mahsa’s
work
suggests
that
RFID
tags
could
cut
the
number
of
pumps
needed
by
a
quarter
and
search
times
by
half.
But
Mahsa
isn’t
sure
the
tags
are
the
right
answer.
They
won’t
be
cheap,
and
they
won’t
show
whether
a
pump
sitting
by
a
bedside
is
in
use,
or
in
storage.
Perhaps,
she
says,
a
low-tech
system
where
the
pumps
are
stored
centrally
and
“rented”
by
the
hour
would
prevent
them
being
hoarded.
Mahsa
is
one
of
several
management
sciences
students
helping
Grand
River
Hospital
manage
its
technology
–
sometimes
by
recommending
hospital
staff
use
less
of
it.
Graduate student, Management Sciences