Trang Luu

Optimising the location and capacity of healthcare facilities for time‑critical care in low‑ and middle‑income countries

Trang Luu works on mathematical methods to improve access to healthcare in low‑ and middle‑income countries. Their research focuses on designing networks of healthcare facilities so that patients reach treatment as quickly as possible. The goal is to minimise overall time‑to‑treatment, combining both travel time and waiting time, under realistic budget constraints.

To address this, Luu builds optimisation models that jointly determine where healthcare facilities should be located and how much capacity (beds, staff, equipment, etc.) each facility should have. These models are informed by datasets that combine population distributions, road networks, and detailed information on existing hospitals and their treatments, allowing system designs to be evaluated in a realistic way. While stroke care is the main application in her current projects, the modelling framework is designed to be broadly applicable, so that NGOs, governments and other partners can use it to improve geospatial accessibility and service capacity for a wide range of time‑critical healthcare services.