Elisabetta Benevento, Alessandro Stefanini and Marco Berdini - Transforming Healthcare Operations through Business Process Analytics

Hospitals, and particularly Emergency departments (EDs), are increasingly challenged by overcrowding, resource shortages, and rising demand for care, which compromise operational efficiency and service quality. Business process analytics constitute a good response to this problem. Specifically, advanced data-driven techniques like machine learning (ML) and Process Mining are emerging as a powerful tool for health management, enabling decision support systems able to enhance real-time decision making and optimize workflows.

Insert in this field, we briefly present three applied studies: (i) a real-time ML system that forecasts X-ray service times in a mid-sized Italian ED using 27 months of observational data; (ii) a predictive-monitoring tool that estimates next-hour service demand at the level of ED sub-units; and (iii) a resource-planning framework that integrates a Bill of Service with process mining to quantify staff, equipment, and facility needs by a specific patient class (e.g., femur fracture, lung cancer). Finally, the presentation will introduce the conjoint research, which is still at a preliminary stage, on the impact of “Early Task Initialization” (ETI) practices on the ED performances.

Elisabetta Benevento, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Energy, Systems, and Territory, and Construction Engineering, University of Pisa. She obtained the title of Ph.D. in Enterprise Engineering at the University of Rome Tor Vergata in 2021. She spent a visiting period at RWTH Aachen University in 2018 and 2020. Her main research topics are Business Process Management, Business Analytics, Process Mining, Operations Management, Logistics, and Healthcare Management. Her research contributions have been published in leading international journals such as Technovation, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and International Journal of Forecasting. She took part in several regional, national, and international projects.

Marco Berdini is a PhD student in management engineering at the University of Tor Vergata. He obtained a master’s degree in Logistics Process Management from the University of Pisa and gained some work experience in companies specializing in data analysis and cost accounting. During this experience he developed operational and programming skills to create and evaluate machine learning models applied to both data in tabular and in image format. His research interest focuses mainly on healthcare process management and the use of advanced analytics techniques in this context.

Alessandro Stefanini, PhD, is Associate Professor at the University of Pisa in the field of Management Engineering. His academic journey includes a PhD in Enterprise Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and remarkable international experiences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Kaunas University of Technology (KTU). Over the years, he has actively contributed to International, European, National, and industry-led projects, collaborating with academic and corporate partners to drive innovation. Beyond academia, his professional path has been shaped by valuable roles in multinational corporations, where he worked as a process engineer and production planner.

His research interests span diverse domains, including Healthcare Management, Business Process Analytics, Predictive Analytics (including AI), Behavioral Operations Management, Industry 4.0/5.0, and Circular Economy.