Public Health Preparedness Modeling

A user in New York asked for clarification of some of the inputs to the Clinic Planning Model Generator. Here is my response for everyone’s use.
Patient arrival batch size: Do the patients arrive in batches (because of transportation like buses)? If not, then just enter 1.
Batch size variance:What is the variance of these [...]

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A Clinic Planning Model can estimate the cycle time of a POD (clinic) – the average time that patients spend in the POD (from the time they arrive until the time they leave). This estimate is based on a steady-state approximation of the POD; that is, it assumes that the arrival rate (in patients/hour) [...]

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This is not about modeling, but it’s certainly relevant to preparedness planning: The Washington Post had an article by Mary Beth Sheridan on Wednesday, November 14, 2007, about government agencies teaching kids about emergency preparedness. The front-page article headline is “Boys and Girls, Can You Say Anthrax?”
The article states that preparedness experts hope [...]

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The drive-through flu clinic by Howard County, Maryland, was one of nine flu clinics in the county this fall. These demonstrate the idea of having different types of clinics focused on specific populations. An “Adult Clinic” for those over 50 years old was held during the day on a Friday. A Flumist [...]

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A planner from California wrote about some problems using the Clinic Planning Model Generator with Excel 97. We investigated and found that the software used a function that was not available in Excel 97. We created a specialized version with a substitute function that performs the same calculation but is compatible with Excel [...]

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After one of my talks in Seattle, a colleague suggested that we should consider open source software instead of relying on Microsoft Excel for the Clinic Planning Model Generator. His comment was motivated by Massachusetts’ intention to use open source software. I have not heard of any other states moving in that [...]

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Yesterday, for the second year in a row, University of Maryland students conducted a time study of a drive-through flu clinic Howard County, Maryland. Data from this time study will be used by Howard County public health planners for evaluating the performance of their clinic; we will use the data to validate our [...]

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I am attending the INFORMS Annual Meeting here in Seattle today. This morning I gave a talk about the work we’ve done on models for mass dispensing and vaccination, including the mass arrivals model and the resupply logistics model. This afternoon I will be presenting the Clinic Planning Model Generator, which automatically creates [...]

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We are constructing a list of computer models that have been developed for public health preparedness activities and are available on-line for use by public health professionals. We provide links to web sites for accessing the models and contacting those who developed them. Models are listed alphabetically within [...]

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Welcome to the Public Health Preparedness Modeling blog. This blog is here to support public health emergency preparedness planners and the researchers who are developing models for this community. I welcome comments about the subjects covered here and particular models.
I’m Jeffrey W. Herrmann, the blog moderator. My background is in operations research [...]

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