Public Health Preparedness Modeling

CDC’s Division of the Strategic National Stockpile (DSNS) will conduct a webinar on RealOpt at 2:00 PM ET this Wednesday, September 2, 2009. RealOpt is a simulation-based optimization software that can help planners design PODs that run more efficiently and achieve desired throughput rates while operating with fewer staff. Contact Allison Cain [...]

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We recently worked with a local school district that is planning Flumist clinics in which a batch of 15 students arrives every 5 minutes. You can find the complete clinic planning model that we created online at the Clinic Planning Model Generator software page. The clinic includes a forms check station and a [...]

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The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) has released a report assessing the government’s preparations for the resurgence of the H1N1 influenza this fall.
The report describes a “plausible scenario” in which 30 to 50% of Americans are infected, as many as 1.8 million people are admitted to the hospital, 300,000 patients require [...]

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The article by Brandeau et al. in the same issue presents recommendations for mathematical and simulation models:
1. Include stakeholder input to effectively address the spectrum of relevant real-world planning and response problems.
2. Include a user-friendly interface, the ability to customize model inputs to suit local needs, the ability to quickly and easily perform sensitivity analysis, [...]

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The July/August 2009 issue of Medical Decision Making includes an article by Nathaniel Hupert and his colleagues describing a model that determines the expected number of individuals who develop symptomatic inhalational anthrax and require hospital-based intravenous antibiotic treatment. The key parameters in their study are delays in the dispensing of antibiotics and the effectiveness [...]

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The Montgomery County, MD, Advanced Practice Center for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response and I would like to remind everyone that POD planning tools like the Clinic Planning Model Generator (CPMG) can be used to plan staffing and predict queueing and throughput H1N1 vaccination in PODs and in schools.
Some of these will be very [...]

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