Dr. Mark Isken can’t help helping.
The associate professor of management information systems for Oakland University’s School of Business Administration offers his assistance even when he walks into a colleague’s classroom.
“He would come into the ATiB lab and see a problem written on the board,” explains Jerad Wolfrum, SBA ’07, an accounting major with a minor in Applied Technology in Business (ATiB). “He’d say, ‘I have had some experience with this. Do you mind if I help?’ He’d then show us how to solve it. He was a big influence on a lot of us in the ATiB program.”
Wolfrum says Isken also was quick to advise him on his ATiB project that had him creating an information technology program to solve a scheduling hiccup for General Motors. “Believe it or not, I never had him as an instructor, but he was always helping me, even when it came time to pick a graduate school,” he says. “He gave me lots of advice.”
Isken, an engineer, has made it his life’s work to develop mathematical models, translate them into computer programs and solve problems in the health care industry.
Isken’s free world
What sets his research apart is that he doesn’t just write a research article on his findings. He creates a companion website showing others how to use his model and software for free.
“I’ve always been frustrated because it’s really hard to take math from a general description in a journal article and figure out how to use it. My goal is to help bridge that gap, so I started experimenting with these companion websites, including http://www.hselab.org/, so it helps people get some use out of it,” he says.
Isken’s “free” philosophy is a defining factor of his research, says Brian Denton, an associate professor at the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University, who does similar research.
“This has important implications for at least two reasons,” Denton says. “First, it allows the dissemination of knowledge to a greater number of health care providers than would occur in a typical research project. Second, because it allows researchers and practitioners to compare alternative approaches. Thus, his approach has implications for research and practice in health care delivery.”
Isken’s latest research has him improving patient flow in a hospital obstetrical postpartum unit. Because surgery scheduling and labor inductions directly impact occupancy, he’s reviewed data and created a patient flow model that previews the impact of different scheduling policies. The model essentially creates scenarios and shows how current staffing and any proposed schedule change would handle the unit’s population. The goal is to avoid overtaxing the staff and create a better healing environment for the patient.
“I know people are using it,” Isken explains. “It’s been downloaded a couple hundred times, so that’s good. I also get emails on it -- and other models I’ve shared.”
Health care gets healthier
Iskin started the research in 2009 with a $15,000 grant he received from Health Systems Engineering, a company owned by Tim Ward, now deputy program director at The Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED), the headquarters for the U.S. Navy’s medical department. Ward and Isken shared an office while in graduate school at the University of Michigan. At the time, Ward’s company focused mainly on obstetric services. He needed something to help ease the nurses’ workload. Knowing Isken’s expertise, Ward asked him to step in.
Isken first learned to use math models to help the health care industry as an undergrad at Michigan. After the summer of his junior year, he interned with the management engineering department at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. They hired him and he worked there for seven years. Beaumont even funded his dissertation, where he developed staff scheduling optimization models to help the hospital insure adequate staffing while controlling costs.
He created similar projects for Henry Ford Hospital, and in 1998 joined OU’s School of Business Administration.
Isken made the right choice in getting into teaching, says former student Michael Marks, Operations Management ’11. “He was hands-down the best professor I had at OU,” he says. “I would not be the person that I am if it weren't for him.”
In fact, Isken helped Marks and Wolfrum get the interview for their analyst jobs at Improvement Path Systems, Inc., a health care analytics consulting firm in Bingham Farms, Mich.
“I want to make an impact,” Isken adds. “I want to help.”
By Rene Wisely