Combined mathematical programming and heuristics for a radiotherapy pre‐treatment scheduling problem

Demand for radiotherapy treatment services has increased due to higher cancer incidence, ageing population, and a larger number of prescribed radiotherapy fractions. This higher demand can, in turn, produce longer waiting times for radiotherapy treatment. We introduce a real‐world radiotherapy pre‐treatment scheduling problem at a hospital in the UK. This scheduling problem is modelled as an optimisation problem with multiple objectives. The objectives are hierarchical, thus the solution approach is based on solving a series of single‐objective optimisation scheduling problems. Each of these problems is formulated as a mathematical programming model. Dispatching rules were introduced to produce an initial solution for the mathematical programming model. Their performance is compared to the mathematical programming approach.