Search Strategy#

The databases Scopus, PubMed Central, ACM digital library, and Web of Science (WoS) were searched to retrieve articles on DES applications in healthcare from 2019 to 2022. Scopus has previously demonstrated wide coverage for systematic reviews of modelling and simulation in multiple domains, including healthcare. We searched PubMed using general terms rather than MeSH Terms, which have been found to produce large numbers of irrelevant results for operations research and operations management papers. The PubMed search allowed inclusion of healthcare simulation applications published in healthcare journals. We included WoS as others have shown that it can identify different articles to Scopus []. We used the ALL keyword to search all fields and broaden the search in WoS as much as possible to pick up any papers we may have missed across SCOPUS and PubMed. We included ACM Digital Library to ensure our search covered Transactions on Modelling and Computer Simulation and ACM healthcare journals.

The key search terms included: “health”, “healthcare”, or “patient”, and “discrete”, “event”, and “simulation”, in the title, abstract, and/or keywords. Search years were limited to 2019-2022, and Scopus terms were limited to articles, excluding letters, notes, editorials, conference reviews, short surveys, data papers, and erratums.

We limited our search years to allow time for the March, 2018 publication of the STRESS guidelines to take effect. STRESS includes the requirement to include a code access statement (Section 6). This also follows publication of an Open Science checklist, and the February, 2019 release of The Turing Way, a guide to reproducible research published by the UK’s National Institute for Data Science. We also considered the ACM RCR initiative, and the impact this has had on available DES models. An exploratory search for papers badged as artifacts available within any field containing “discrete event simulation” between 01/01/2016 and 31/12/2018 returned 7 papers, none of which related to healthcare DES.

We also conducted backwards and forwards citation chasing to enhance our search. Backwards citation chasing was conducted in context during data extraction. Where studies cited models in prior work we followed that up and reviewed the paper. Forward citation chasing was conducted using spidercite (https://sr-accelerator.com) on all papers that cited a published model.

Scopus search string#

Scopus search strategy for Covid-19 simulation models 2020/22. In the following search string we replaced XX with 19-22 to vary the year of search.

TITLE-ABS-KEY ((( patient AND discrete AND event AND simulation )) OR ( health AND discrete AND event AND simulation ) OR ( healthcare AND discrete AND event AND simulation ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( PUBSTAGE,"final" ) ) AND ( EXCLUDE ( DOCTYPE,"le" ) OR EXCLUDE ( DOCTYPE,"no" ) OR EXCLUDE ( DOCTYPE,"cr" ) OR EXCLUDE ( DOCTYPE,"ed" ) OR EXCLUDE ( DOCTYPE,"sh" ) OR EXCLUDE ( DOCTYPE,"dp" ) OR EXCLUDE ( DOCTYPE,"er" ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( PUBYEAR,20XX) )

Pubmed search string#

The pubmed search string was as follows:

 (((discrete[Title/Abstract]) AND (event[Title/Abstract])) AND (simulation[Title/Abstract])) AND (("2019"[Date - Publication] : "2022"[Date - Publication]))

ACM Digital Library search string#

The ACM Digital Library query string was as follows. These results were filtered for e-publication between Jan 2019 and Dec 2023.

(Title:(patient health*) AND Title:("discrete event simulation")) OR (Abstract:(patient health*) AND Abstract:("discrete event simulation")) OR (Keyword:(patient health*) AND Keyword:("discrete event simulation"))

Full query syntax with filter applied

"query": {Title:(("discrete event simulation")) OR (Abstract:(patient health*)) AND Abstract:(("discrete event simulation")) OR (Keyword:(patient health*)) AND Keyword:("discrete event simulation"))} "filter": {E-Publication Date: (01/01/2019 TO 12/31/2022)},{ACM Content: DL}

Web of Science search string#

We used the ALL keyword to try and broaden the search in WoS as much as possible to pick up any papers we may have missed across SCOPUS and PubMed. We used the following query string with index data limited between 2019-01-01 and 2022-12-31.

(((ALL=(discrete AND event AND simulation AND "health*") OR ALL=(discrete AND event AND simulation AND "patient")) NOT DT=(Review OR Meeting Abstract OR Editorial Material OR Retraction)))

To view a link to the live results of the WoS search is here

ACM Exploratory search string (pre 2018)#

"query": { AllField:("discrete event simulation" "discrete-event simulation") }
"filter": { E-Publication Date: (01/01/2016 TO 12/31/2018), Reproducibility Types: Artifacts Available, ACM Content: DL }