John Blake,
- Operational Research for Managing Blood Product Inventory and Ordering
Dr. John Blake received a Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto in 1988. He was employed by General Motors of Canada Limited from 1988-1991 as an industrial engineer and a production line supervisor.
From 1991-1993, Dr. Blake was employed as a research scientist at the University of Toronto. He worked on a project funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health to develop a simulation based tool to evaluate the impact of operating room schedules on inpatient unit nursing workload.
In 1997, Dr. Blake received his doctorate from University of Toronto. The topic of his dissertation was a method for allocating resources to physicians working in an acute care hospital.
In 1994, Dr. Blake and Dr. Michael Carter received the Canadian Operational Research Society's Practice Prize for a study of emergency room wait time issues at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
Dr. Blake has published several papers in the area of health care and industrial engineering. He is interested in blood inventory and ordering models as well as the operations of blood agencies. Dr. Blake is presently working with CBS to build a model that will improve donor flow and promote operational efficiency.
Dr. Blake is the past president of the Canadian Operational Research Society and the Health Application Section of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). He is presently a member of INFORMS and the Institute of Industrial Engineers. Dr. Blake is a registered member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Nova Scotia.
Selected Publications:
Blake JT (2009). On the use of operational research for managing platelet inventory and ordering. Transfusion. 49(3):396-401.
VanBerkel P, Blake JT (2007). A Comprehensive Simulation for Wait Time Reduction and Capacity Planning in General Surgery. Health Care Management Science, 10(4): 373-385.
Blake JT (2005). Shooting Arrows in the Dark: The Policies and Practices of Waitlist Management in Canada. Clinical and Investigative Medicine, 28(6): 308.
Carter MW, Blake JT (2005). Using Simulation in an Acute-Care Hospital: Easier Said Than Done. In Handbook of Operations Research in Healthcare. Edited by M. Brandeau, F. Sainfort, W. Pierskalla. New York: Kluwer.
Blake JT, Carter MW (2003). Physician and Hospital Funding Models Under Decreasing Resources. Socio-Economic Planning Science, 37:45-68.
Blake JT, Donald J (2002). Using Integer Programming to Allocate Operating Room Time at Mount Sinai Hospital. Interfaces, 32(2): 63-73.
Blake JT, Carter MW (2002). A Goal-Programming Approach to Resource Allocation in Acute-Care Hospitals. European Journal of Operational Research, 140(3): 541-561.
Dexter F, Lubarsky DA, Blake JT (2002). Sampling error can significantly affect measured hospital financial performance of surgeons and resulting operating room time allocations. Anesthesia & Analgesia, 95(1): 184-188.