Abstract:  Hepatitis C virus (HCV) prevalence in prison systems is ten times higher than the general population, and hence prison systems offer a unique opportunity to control the HCV epidemic. New HCV treatment drugs are very effective, but providing treatment to all inmates is prohibitively expensive, which precludes universal HCV treatment in prison systems. As such, current practice recommends prioritizing treatment based on clinical and incarceration-related factors, including disease staging, remaining sentence length, and injection drug use (IDU) status. However, there is controversy about how these factors should be incorporated because of the complicated tradeoffs. In this study, we propose an analytics approach to support hepatitis C treatment prioritization decisions in U.S. prisons.

Bio: Turgay Ayer is the Virginia C. and Joseph C. Mello Endowed Chair and the Research Director for Healthcare Analytics and Business Intelligence in the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech. In addition, Dr. Ayer holds a courtesy appointment at Emory Medical School and serves as a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Ayer’s research focus is analytics for healthcare, social good, and socially responsible operations. Ayer’s research findings have been published in top-tier business, engineering, medical, and health policy journals and widely covered in popular media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Fox Tv, Washington Post, NPR, and US News, among others.  Research by Ayer and co-authors has made a policy impact by improving blood collection operations nationwide for the American Red Cross, by influencing lung cancer drug pricing and coverage decisions in the U.S. and U.K., by optimizing distribution strategies for scarce hepatitis C treatment drugs in correctional health systems, and by enhancing how medical surplus products are allocated to the developing world by a major medical surplus recovery organization.  Ayer has received multiple recognitions for his contributions, including an NSF CAREER Award, first place in the MSOM Responsible Research in Operations Management Award, first place in the MSOM Practice-Based Research Competition, the National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Award, and designation as an INFORMS Franz Edelman Laureate.

Ayer is actively involved in INFORMS and is a past president of the INFORMS Health Applications Society. On the editorial side, Ayer currently serves as a department editor for Operations Research in Real-World OR Innovations area; he is also an associate editor for Management Science.  Ayer received a B.S. in industrial engineering from Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. ​