{"71090":{"#nid":"71090","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Enhancing Disaster and Medical Response","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EPlanning for a catastrophe involving a disease outbreak or mass casualties is an ongoing challenge for first responders and emergency managers. They must make critical decisions on treatment distribution points, staffing levels, impacted populations and potential impact in a compressed window of time when seconds could mean life or death.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAlthough extensive resources have been devoted to planning for a worse case scenario on the local, regional and national scale, a June 2008 report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found gaps still exist. While many states have made progress in planning for mass casualty events, many noted continued concerns related to maintaining adequate staffing levels and accessing other resources necessary to effectively respond.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EResearchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology\u0027s Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering have developed a computer software system that allows flexible design of facility models, including various clinical models created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The system is designed to help federal, state and local first responders design and test more efficient plans and policies for dealing with health care emergencies.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EKnown as RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9, the program was created by Dr. Eva Lee, an associate professor of industrial and systems engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and director of the Center for Operations Research in the Medicine and HealthCare. Since its initial deployment in 2004, the system currently is approaching 400 users among the emergency preparedness community. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe appeal of RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9 is simple. No other system provides such an adaptive planning and assessment tool for large-scale emergencies. The program can assist in the design and of an all-encompassing, flexible and dynamic public health emergency response capability that requires strategic and operational systems planning.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022When it comes to medical emergency preparation, it is difficult to anticipate the outcome of a situation that has never occurred. Decisions must be made quickly,\u0022 explained Lee. \u0022RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9, not only helps policy makers better prepare and more efficiently deploy available resources, the program also identifies gaps crucial to effective mitigation planning.\u0022\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ECharged with administering medication to an at-risk population during a disease outbreak or exposure to a biological agent, or to radiation or other harmful substances, the CDC and public health administrators must quickly ramp up point-of-dispensing (POD) locations and deliver appropriate emergency medical services in an orderly, expeditious and safe manner.  For this reason, they value RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9, as an effective planning tool. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E \u0022RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9, is flexible, adaptable, easy-to-use and produces meaningful results to the user,\u0022 said Bernard Benecke, a CDC staff member at the Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response. \u0022It allows for complex optimization of PODs that cannot be determined by the naked eye.\u0022\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAccording to Benecke, RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9,  was used in several major exercises in 2007 and has been funded  by the CDC again this year for on-site drills due to its usefulness to local planners in changing standard operating procedures and POD designs that maximize efficiency. One exercise involved a multiple-site analysis that evaluated point of distribution sites for medications in the wake of a pandemic flu outbreak. \u0022We learned that some local health departments had good plans in place, while others had more work to do,\u0022 noted Lee.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EBesides pandemic planning, since 2004, Lee and her research team have participated in strategic planning and in time-motion studies for anthrax and smallpox drills. In addition, RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9, was successfully utilized by the City of New Orleans in 2007 for a mass vaccination drill that actually provided citizens with free flu shots. The program assisted in the clinic design and in determining optimal staffing rates. RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9, was also able to pinpoint bottlenecks and the numbers of individuals receiving flu shots proved to be close to what the system anticipated. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9, is the first system that looks at the design of strategic planning and operational response on the ground,\u0022 said Lee. \u0022It gives policy makers a tool to assess their capabilities for handling large scale medical emergencies and how  they might handle scenarios ranging from local public health emergencies to a situation of national magnitude.\u0022\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EIn addition to being robust, RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9, is extremely accessible. As a result of Lee\u0027s negotiation with the university, emergency planners can access the program free of charge.  \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EBeyond biological and infectious disease outbreak emergency response, RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9 is currently used by first responders in planning for a radiological crisis, especially in radiation contamination screening and health monitoring.  Lee also points out that the program is not confined to medical scenarios. It has been successfully deployed in manufacturing and industrial settings to help pinpoint where to locate manufacturing plants, personnel and other resources.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EDespite the prospects for new applications, RealOpt\u00c2\u00a9 has proven its worth in the emergency response arena.  \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022First responders are able to use RealOpt\u0027s\u00c2\u00a9 capabilities to design their own clinics and compare different optimization methodologies. Additionally, it allows the user to optimize staffing and deal with shifting clinic demands during a crisis event. No other modeling software that I am aware of is able to do this,\u0022 concluded Benecke.\n\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Program Helps Public Health Officials Plan and Respond More Efficiently"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology\u0027s Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering have developed a computer software system that allows flexible design of facility models, including various clinical models created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The system is designed to help federal, state and local first responders design and test more efficient plans and policies for dealing with health care emergencies.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Real Opt helps public health sector respond more efficiently."}],"uid":"27281","created_gmt":"2008-08-15 00:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:01:15","author":"Lisa Grovenstein","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2008-08-15T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2008-08-15T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"71091":{"id":"71091","type":"image","title":"first responder exercise","body":null,"created":"1449177348","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:15:48","changed":"1475894628","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:43:48"}},"media_ids":["71091"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www2.isye.gatech.edu\/~evakylee\/medicalor\/","title":"Center for Operations Research in Medicine and HealthCare"},{"url":"http:\/\/www2.isye.gatech.edu\/people\/faculty\/Eva_K_Lee\/","title":"Dr. Eva Lee"}],"groups":[{"id":"1214","name":"News Room"}],"categories":[{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"2033","name":"disaster planning"},{"id":"1043","name":"eva lee"},{"id":"755","name":"public health"},{"id":"2032","name":"Real Opt"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cstrong\u003ELisa Grovenstein\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications \u0026amp; Marketing\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.gatech.edu\/contact\/index.html?id=lgrovenste3\u0022\u003EContact Lisa Grovenstein\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E404-894-8835\u003C\/strong\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["lisa.grovenstein@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}