One such researcher was Turgay Ayer, George Family Foundation Early Career Professor and associate professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE). He has focused his career on health care analytics and has created models to help slow the spread of various infectious diseases, including Hepatitis C. He also serves as the research director for health care analytics and business intelligence in the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech and holds a courtesy appointment at Emory Medical School.
Along with ISyE Ph.D. student Jade Yingying Xiao, Ayer partnered with a research team from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, led by Assistant Professor Jagpreet Chhatwal, and a team from Boston Medical Center, led by Associate Professor Benjamin Linas. Together this group created the COVID-19 Simulator. The simulator, an interactive tool designed to inform COVID-19 intervention policy decisions in the U.S., is also available to the general public. It evaluates the impact of different social distancing interventions on the reduction in spread of coronavirus in the U.S., on both a national and state level.
“We have leveraged our previous expertise in epidemiological and infectious disease modeling, from a model-building perspective,” explained Ayer. “However, we could not utilize our knowledge from any other diseases in terms of the spread of this virus because it is so different. The speed at which the virus spreads from one person to another and how long an infected individual can be asymptomatic — these values are unique to COVID-19. We needed to dig deeper into the literature and observed statistics to parameterize the model.”
In early March, many states in the U.S. began implementing social distancing practices — which included limiting social gatherings, staying six feet away from others, wearing masks in public, closing schools and businesses, teleworking, and other measures to “flatten the curve” and slow the spread of the disease. The COVID-19 simulator is designed to predict the outcomes of the various levels of social distancing to help policy makers make educated decisions when lifting the various restrictions and give individuals information to determine their own actions going forward.
According to Ayer, the simulator, which is updated on a weekly basis, is an SEIR compartmental model — the data sorts individuals into groups in various stages of the disease: susceptible, exposed, infected, and recovered. It combines established epidemiological and infectious disease modeling with state-of-the-art statistical modeling to reflect the most recent forecasts given a variety of scenarios. Intervention levels include “minimal restrictions,” like increased handwashing and avoiding sick individuals; “stay-at-home” orders, where people are advised to stay at home unless they need to pick up groceries or other essential goods; and lockdown, the most extreme level, as exercised in other parts of the world such as China and India.
The simulator has received a great deal of attention since its April 24 launch. In the first week, the website received more than 100,000 hits, and the simulator has been featured on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, NPR, the U.K.’s Daily Mail, Fox News, and numerous other media outlets.
The team is currently working to incorporate cell phone tracking data into the model to assess how increased mobility as businesses open will influence projections. In the future, they plan to expand the simulator globally.
]]>Empty classrooms and supermarket shelves marked the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Keskinocak expects more signs of the times to come – such as pop-up pandemic clinics and the shortage and rationing of medical supplies beyond masks and ventilators.
Keskinocak is the director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which studies how government and private sectors can cooperate to handle health and humanitarian crises. And she is William W. George Chair and Professor in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
In previous research, Keskinocak’s team created a model that accurately ran the course of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and when COVID-19 struck, her team was already in the middle of modeling how special clinics could significantly slow a pandemic. In the meantime, temporary clinics in Wuhan, China, appear to have validated her model.
The surge of COVID-19 patients pushed Italy’s health care system into a very ugly crisis, and the U.S. needs to take measures now to handle similar patient surges. Pandemics often strike in two waves or more, and the second is usually the worst, so measures need to be lasting, Keskinocak said.
Even without COVID-19, the U.S. healthcare system has been under strain. Emergency rooms are often overcrowded; it takes a long time to schedule an appointment, and there is a chronic shortage of nursing staff.
[Read Keskinocak's guest op-ed in the New York Daily News: COVID clinics now]
“We need to expand capacity and unleash creative flexibility in our healthcare systems. We should use more telemedicine and create self-service stations for testing. I would particularly like to see specialized COVID-19 clinics established now,” Keskinocak said.
“Special clinics could be separate spaces in existing facilities or standalone facilities. As COVID-19 spreads, we expect a lot more people with cold- and flu-like symptoms to seek testing and care. The healthcare capacities are just not there for a business as usual approach, and taking it could harm patients by delaying care and increasing risk of infection.”
Gathering COVID-19 patients in tight spaces like waiting rooms with other patients would increase the coronavirus’ spread, and patients with preexisting conditions could face mortal threat. Contagion could also spread into hospitals.
“Dedicated pandemic clinics could implement targeted hygiene, air filtration, and specialized protective equipment beyond masks and gloves for healthcare workers. They can tailor workflows to test and care for patients quickly and effectively and keep them away from other patients and staff,” Keskinocak said.
Payment needs to be easy, too, including financing the uninsured. In the middle of a public health emergency, it is vital to not get bogged down by restrictions meant for normal times.
Toilet paper will make a comeback in supermarkets, but in its place, life-saving medications could become perilously scarce. Countries need to act now to prevent this from compounding the COVID-19 crisis.
“Dwindling availability of hospital beds, ventilators, and personal protective equipment like masks and gloves during a patient surge – those are the obvious things. But we could also see shortages of items like asthma medication or antidepressants. Worst case, even food supplies could run low,” Keskinocak said.
[Read Keskinocak's guest op-ed in The Hill: medical supply chain dangers]
Here’s how shortages work and can lead to price gouging and also rationing. The latter can have good effects.
“Shortages are the result of supply-demand imbalance caused by either an unexpected increase in demand or unexpected decrease in supply or both. Shortages are common in crises such as natural disasters or health emergencies. But given the worldwide slowdown of economic activity in pandemics, disruptions could get much worse this time,” Keskinocak said.
“Supply chains are actually intricate webs of multiple parts that span the globe. Pandemics damage many of those parts, and it can take time to recover. This creates a more serious and worrisome imbalance between supply and demand.”
Toilet paper will return because people fear-hoard it in a panic but consume it at normal rates. When the panic runs its course, demand slows back down to the actual rate of consumption and its normal supply chain, which is relatively simple, catches up.
“With medicine and healthcare services and supplies, the increase in demand is typically already in line with consumption, so a shortage in supply or increase in demand can create a supply-demand gap that continues for a long time,” Keskinocak said. “Medical supply chains are also very complex and fragile.”
In normal times, most supply chains work at a plodding pace, and when crisis strikes, it is tough to ramp them up due to expensive equipment, complex logistics, and strict regulations, particularly in health care. Even temporary shortages of medicines and medical devices can have consequences for patients who need them.
“If shortages become serious, rationing – with a priority allocation to those most in need – can help balance demand and supply for critical items like medications.”
Once created and approved, the production of vaccines or antivirals for COVID-19 will ramp up slowly and could be in short supply at first. Decision-makers need plan investments now in the supply chains necessary for their effective distribution.
This will include painful, necessary decisions like prioritizing first doses for healthcare workers, people with pre-existing conditions, and the elderly. The current system of restocking vaccines in the U.S. after initial distribution also has serious gaps that need fixing to save many more lives.
In the meantime, social distancing is one of the best ways to protect everyone and reduce the patient surge into clinics. Do it if you or anyone in your household has any cold-like symptoms.
[Read Keskinocak's commentary on social distancing on AJC.com]
Also read: Vaccine Supply Gaps Can Make Pandemics Deadlier
Media contacts: Ben Brumfield (ben.brumfield@comm.gatech.edu) and John Toon (john.toon@comm.gatech.edu)
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Senior Science Writer
Institute Communications
]]>In the U.S., hepatitis C is most concentrated in the criminal justice system. Today, 17 percent of prison inmates are suffering from hepatitis C; the prevalence of the disease is nearly 10 times higher in prisons compared with the general community. Unfortunately, correctional facilities have very tight budgets and cannot bear the cost burden of hepatitis C treatment. Currently, on average, only about one to two percent of the infected inmates have access to treatment medication. When left untreated, released inmates are likely to spread hepatitis C to others in the community. It’s critical for treatment options to be studied in prison populations to not only help inmates, but benefit society at large both in terms of healthcare quality and cost-savings.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is working toward eliminating hepatitis C altogether by 2030, so the focus on the prison populations is a crucial starting point. Recent research by Turgay Ayer, George Family Foundation assistant professor at Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and his colleagues has shown that screen and treatment programs in prisons could significantly reduce the disease burden. Ayer is dedicated to his work to defeat Hepatitis C, focusing his grant monies on developing decision support tools for practical use in order for prison healthcare workers to make optimal hepatitis C treatment decisions for inmates.
“Because of cost constraints, prisons cannot afford to treat every inmate with hepatitis C, so prioritization decisions have to be made,” said Ayer. “My research is dedicated to enabling decision-makers in prison systems to make the best choice possible to treat the most people with the given budget they have.”
Created with systems modeling methodologies, Ayer’s Decision Support Tool helps healthcare providers decide who to treat first. Ayer’s tool takes into account a number of factors, including disease progression, injection drug use (IDU) status, and prison sentence length. Contrary to how a normal disease treatment decision might be made, in this case, just because someone is at a more advanced stage of the disease does not necessarily indicate they should be treated first.
“Ninety-five percent of inmates are released in less than five years,” said Ayer. “While mostly it makes sense to prioritize sickest patients with longest length of sentences, in certain cases, prioritizing IDU patients with shorter length of sentences may help more effectively reduce future infections and save on costly liver transplants or cancer treatments down the road. It’s known as treatment as prevention.”
The decision-making framework that Ayer has developed helps to standardize treatment in prisons. He gives an example involving two patients: Patient A is non-IDU patient in an advanced fibrosis (liver scarring) stage of the disease, and has a five year sentence. Patient B is an IDU patient in a medium fibrosis stage of the disease, and has one year sentence. How do you decide who to treat? That’s where Ayer’s Decision Support Tool comes in. The tool captures probabilistic disease progression, treatment effect and capacity constraints to indicate which of these patients should be prioritized. Treatment capacity based on budget ends up dictating who gets treated. A tight budget may indicate that patient A gets treated, while a larger budget may indicate to treat patient B. Given that significant variation exists with respect to treatment capacity and practices across different national state prison systems, Ayer’s tool could be instrumental in standardizing practices and improving outcomes.
“The United States is in the midst of a hepatitis C virus epidemic, and our data-driven model and Decision Support Tool can help to manage the disease burden in a cost-effective way,” said Ayer. “If WHO’s aim is to eliminate an infectious disease that is 10 times more prevalent in prisons, you can’t ignore that population. Making smart decisions in the prison systems by using capacity in an optimal way when resources are limited saves more lives and prevents future infections.”
Currently, two prison systems are piloting Ayer’s Decision Support Tool. Ayer’s full paper on the hepatitis C Treatment Prioritization Decision Support Tool is available here and currently under review for publication in Operations Research.
]]>The negative effect of emergencies is disproportionally high on low income or vulnerable populations, complicating ongoing needs in health, nutrition, education, and other key areas. Whether an emergency or a long term development challenge, there are often many actors, limited resources, variability and uncertainly, and potential disruptions in the demand and supply chains. All of these factors highlight the importance of logistics and supply chain management in these contexts.
In light of these grand challenges, the annual Conference on Health & Humanitarian Logistics provides an open forum to discuss new solutions in health systems, disaster preparedness and response, and long-term development. Co-organized by the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems (CHHS) at Georgia Institute of Technology, INSEAD, MIT Humanitarian Response Lab, and Northeastern University, the conference offers a unique platform for participants to discuss challenges, share best practices, and explore potential collaborations, with the goal of enhancing efficiency and effectiveness in health and humanitarian systems, and ultimately improving and saving lives around the world.
2017 marked the 9th year of the conference, which took place during June 7-9, in Copenhagen, Denmark at the UN City, hosted and co-organized by the UNICEF Supply Division. The event drew over 200 attendees from 39 countries and 127 organizations, including non-governmental organizations and UN agencies as well as government, industry, foundations, and academia.
The agenda featured 3 plenary panel sessions and 53 break-out presentation and workshop sessions led by practitioners and thought leaders on current challenges and solutions in health and humanitarian logistics. 31 posters were presented, providing a platform for networking and discussions around new tools and implementations.
Dr. Richard Brennan, Director of Emergency Operations for the World Health Organization (WHO) Emergencies Programme division, delivered the opening keynote, and addressed the role of logistics in health and humanitarian response and the importance of global, national and local capacity building, cross-sector collaboration and partnerships, and performance measurement. Brennan led the Ebola Response as the Director at the WHO headquarters from October 2014 to January 2016 and now oversees the organization’s response to global health emergencies as part of the new Emergencies Programme, from preparedness and prevention to response, and from humanitarian emergencies to disease outbreaks.
Plenary panel sessions included presentations focused on: 1) Global Health Emergencies; 2) Innovation and Influencing Markets; and 3) Ensuring Sustainability of Supply Chain Systems Strengthening Interventions. Keynote and plenary presentations are available on the conference website: chhs.gatech.edu/conference/2017/program/panels.
Participants were active on Twitter (#2017HHLConf) throughout the event, sharing points and reflections, reacting to the presentations and workshops. Participants also commented that the conference was “very educational and allowed for great networking among participants” and “the workshops were well-organized, insightful, and very informative.”
The conference could not have been possible without the generous sponsorship from key partners such as the UPS Foundation, the premiere sponsor for the 9th year, Imperial Health Sciences, Johnson & Johnson, the William David Institute at the University of Michigan, and the Partnership for Supply Chain Management.
]]>Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering
404.385.3102
]]>Efforts to launch the theory-focused institute were supported by the Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) with faculty from the Colleges of Engineering, Sciences and Computing. Xiaoming Huo, principal investigator and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE), will serve as the executive director of TRIAD. “The establishment of TRIAD is tremendously beneficial considering data science is a phenomenon that brings with it so many opportunities. There is a lot of research that needs to be conducted in this emerging field, and we will focus on building the theoretical foundations to establish the principles of data science,” said Huo.
“With the launch of TRIAD and the already well-established NSF South Big Data Innovation Hub, Georgia Tech plays a key role nationally in data science from theory to applications to building community partnerships,” said Srinivas Aluru, co-executive director of IDEaS and a professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering.
Dana Randall, fellow co-executive director and professor in the School of Computer Science, said, “Advances in data science foundations can lead to revolutionary new solutions for analyzing data. TRIAD will accelerate this research by bridging fields to expand our collective capabilities.”
Both Aluru and Randall serve as co-principal investigators of TRIAD, along with Prasad Tetali, a professor in the School of Mathematics and School of Computer Science, and Jeff Wu, the Coca-Cola Chair in Engineering Statistics and a professor in ISyE. “The emphasis on theoretical foundations (of data science) offers a great opportunity for mathematicians to actively engage with other scientists and help make breakthroughs in this fast growing interdisciplinary field," said Tetali.
The analysis of massive, dynamic, noisy and complex data arising in virtually every sphere of human activity is a pressing problem of our time. NSF is responding by dedicating $17.7 million in funding for 12 Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science (TRIPODS) institutes, including TRIAD. Encompassing 14 institutions in 11 states, these projects will promote long-term research and training activities in data science that transcend disciplinary boundaries.
“Data is accelerating the pace of scientific discovery and innovation,” said Jim Kurose, NSF assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). “These new TRIPODS projects will help build the theoretical foundations of data science that will enable continued data-driven discovery and breakthroughs across all fields of science and engineering.”
According to NSF, the TRIPODS awards will enable data-driven discovery through major investments in state-of-the-art mathematical and statistical tools, better data mining and machine learning approaches, enhanced visualization capabilities and more. They also support innovative educational pathways to train the next generation of data scientists.
TRIAD will bring together senior, mid-career and junior faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students and data science practitioners at large using focused working groups, national and international workshops and organized innovation labs. It will build an intellectual atmosphere to connect stakeholders from across the nation and the world on a regular basis.
Initially, TRIAD will focus on four research topics: advanced mathematical modeling for contemporary data; new inferential strategies that can be both scalable and de-centralized; efficient optimization tools with theoretical guarantees; and applications in the context of large datasets from domains including biology, design, manufacturing, logistics and sustainability.
TRIAD will launch with 39 committed faculty members from across Georgia Tech, including from ISyE, the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, the School of Mathematics, the School of Biological Sciences, the School of Computational Science and Engineering and the School of Computer Science.
NSF’s award establishes TRIAD as a Phase I investment. It may be subsequently expanded to Phase II through a second competitive proposal process.
]]>Director of Communications and Grant Writing, Institute for Data Engineering and Science
]]>Read the full story here.
]]>The event was co-hosted by FIU, Open Health Tools (OHT) – an open source community for Health IT and the American Academy of Family Physicians National Research Network. Sponsored by Medicity, the GT Flatliners comprised Ph.D. student Klara Benda and master’s students Adrian Courreges, Monosij Dutta-Roy and Hassan Khan. The NHIN Challenge asked teams to create innovative stylesheets to display the information in a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) to a primary care physician taking calls from patients after office hours. The idea is to develop a CCD visualization tool that facilitates an efficient and effective phone consultation between the on-call doctor and an unfamiliar patient. Not only did the solutions have to interpret and display data error-free; they also had to facilitate the most efficient use of the physician’s time. The Flatliners, competing against professionals in the Health IT field, came up with the following solutions – a problem-based approach, a multi-context approach and a rapid-access approach:
• Problem Oriented Approach (winner): arranged the clinical data by problem so that the physician could hone in on relevant information to the particular problem the patient is presenting.
• Multi-Context Approach (second place): provided a highly flexible visual display that allows the physician to arrange information according to his or her particular "mental model" for handling a particular problem.
• Rapid Access Approach (third place): provided quick and easy direct navigation among all of the clinical areas in which data is stored in the CCD.
It does that using omni-directional wheels and compliant arms, and the only information it needs is the location and orientation of the handles. The researchers discussed their results at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, held May 3rd – 8th in Anchorage, Alaska, where they presented a paper, "Pulling Open Doors and Drawers: Coordinating an Omni-Directional Base and a Compliant Arm with Equilibrium Point Control.
]]>Five premier organizations — Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, The Satcher Leadership Institute of Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia State University, and the Colorado School of Public Health — comprise the initial alliance membership. The universities were chosen for their innovative research in public health and their strong interest in advancing public health practice through applied technology and informatics.
Professors Ozlem Ergun, Pinar Keskinocak, and Julie Swann, co-directors of the Health and Humanitarian Logistics Center, and Professor Dave Goldsman are part of the team that will represent the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech.
"The opportunities for health and humanitarian response in the world are vast. Constrained resources, uncertainty in demand and supply, and many other variables in these settings make quantitative analysis and mathematical modeling excellent tools for decision support," said Swann. "We are excited to work with the University Global Alliance Program as we continue to expand our role in research, education, and multi-organizational collaboration in the vast field of health care."
Members of the UGAP will participate in Northrop Grumman contract work, coordinate research projects, share information and best practices, develop curricula, author joint case studies/white papers, and benefit from learning opportunities within the public health community.
Ergun, Keskinocak, and Swann have worked on a variety of projects including disease modeling and intervention strategies, modeling and optimizing hospital/clinic operations, healthcare policies, allocation of scarce resources for improved health outcomes and emergency response. They have also developed and adapted methodologies for solving complex problems in health and humanitarian logistics including forecasting, mitigation strategies, inventory planning, and decentralized decision making while they mentor graduate students and develop cross-discipline research collaborations for maximum impact.
On March 4–5, 2010, the Georgia Tech team is hosting the annual Health and Humanitarian Logistics Conference. The main objectives of the conference are to articulate the opportunities and challenges in humanitarian response and world health, both from a humanitarian and a corporate/economic perspective; to identify important research issues; to create academic awareness for the research opportunities; and to establish priorities for NGOs, corporations, and the government in terms of their strategies, policies, and investments. Please visit the conference website (http://www.scl.gatech.edu/humlog2010/) for full details and to access the proceedings from last year's event.
"Northrop Grumman has been in the health information technology domain for more than 20 years, and this is an exciting time in our nation's history for advancements in this field," said Amy King, Northrop Grumman's vice president of health information technology programs. "A critical component of applying best-of-breed techniques includes the need to access leaders in such areas as informing health economics, measuring effectiveness of public health interventions, and monitoring and evaluating programs for the sustainment of public health operations in developing areas. The availability of experts in the application of these techniques resides in both academic institutions and private industry."
Northrop Grumman's UGAP interlocks private industry and academic capabilities to address the scarcity of public health informatics resources globally and find solutions to solve global and domestic public health problems.
"The solutions to certain types of public health problems can be more rapidly discovered and better implemented when varied resources are brought together in a collaborative fashion," said Nancy Nelson, director of public health for Northrop Grumman's Information Systems sector. "The UGAP supports the mission of public health practice by bridging the gap between academic and industry capabilities and translating academic thinking into tangible technology solutions that address public health information management challenges."
The partnership program utilizes Northrop Grumman's Public Health Research and Demonstration Center in Atlanta, a state-of-the-art public health technology research and development facility. Through the lab, Northrop Grumman develops technology to support strategic public health initiatives, including disease surveillance such as H1N1, health data analysis and visualization, modeling and simulation of disease and climate effects, and collaboration across the global health community.
UGAP will provide students with practical experience to better prepare public health graduates entering the workforce, as well as strengthen the talent pool for public health informatics. Northrop Grumman employees will gain continuing education opportunities through the member institutions.
Northrop Grumman is a trusted integrator of advanced health solutions, including health and benefits systems management and information security. The company's services span the public health, healthcare delivery, and life sciences domains and include cutting-edge information exchange for electronic health records, Web-enabled workflow processing and large-scale information management.
Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding, and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.
]]>In a rush of support, we make donations and expect quick results. With frustration, however, we see that there is a gap between the event and when supplies actually reach people in need. Why? In the case of Haiti, the infrastructure was completely destroyed. The main port and airport were not operational for the first 48 hours, making it impossible for aid to enter the country. Once the airport's runway was operational, there was chaos prioritizing which planes should land. Even after aid was on land, debris blocked roads with no available equipment to clear them. This is the conundrum that's plaguing relief workers and frustrating and confusing those donating money for recovery.
To read more, click link below.
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/logistics-ignored-in-disaster-289549.html
As associate director, Professor Keskinocak will be part of the senior leadership of HSI, along with Gregory D. Abowd, George Professor and director of the Health Systems Institute, and Mark Braunstein, HSI associate director and Professor of the Practice, College of Computing.
Professor Keskinocak has been actively involved in advising the HSI for the past year. Now, in her role as associate director, she will help develop the research mission and programs, will play a significant role in shaping HSI's research agenda and will serve as the faculty coordinator for the Master's degree program in Health Systems.
Created in 2005 as a multi-institutional and interdisciplinary initiative based at Georgia Tech and Emory University, HSI's research objective is to advance fundamental knowledge of issues central to the delivery of healthcare services through better understanding of the efficient allocation of health resources, appropriate uses of those resources, as well as the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of innovative health care delivery systems that integrate state-of-the-art information, communication, decision support, and biomedical technologies.
HSI researchers include accomplished and practicing academicians, clinicians, post doctoral scholars, and graduate student trainees engaged in the application of quantitative and qualitative research and development methodologies to the needs of the health services and healthcare delivery sectors. Bringing together the expertise of these many disciplines, HSI enables the development and implementation of novel interdisciplinary and collaborative research, education, and outreach programs to transform healthcare delivery systems and lead the nation away from an ineffective, reactive, disease-focused system to achieve a cost-effective, pro-active, health- and wellness-focused system.
Professor Keskinocak's research focuses on applications of operations research and management science with societal impact (particularly health and humanitarian applications), supply chain management, pricing and revenue management, and logistics/transportation. Her research has been published in journals such as Operations Research, Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, IIE Transactions, Naval Research Logistics, and Interfaces.
With Professors Julie Swann and Ozlem Ergum, Professor Keskinocak co-founded and co-directs the Center for Humanitarian Logistics at SCL. The focus of the Center is to improve humanitarian logistics (including short- or long-term, man-made or natural disasters) and ultimately the human condition by system transformations through education, outreach, projects, and research
]]>To measure the impact of these recommended changes and to further explore opportunities for improving patient care, during the summer of 2009, Dr. Atul Vats and Kristin Goin from Children's joined forces with Professor Pinar Keskinocak and Ph.D. students Monica Villarreal and Tuba Yilmaz from the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech. The Children's/Georgia Tech team used human factors techniques and statistical tools to collect and analyze observational data for eleven rounding events before and twelve rounding events after process re-design. They also conducted staff surveys to assess improvements in communication and care coordination, and analyzed customer satisfaction data to evaluate impact on patient experience. The study showed that the implementation of the new lean-focused, patient-centric rounding structure led to increased timeliness and efficiency of rounds, improved staff and customer satisfaction, improved throughput, and reduced attending physician man-hours.
The results of the study will be presented at the 2010 Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) Congress on January 9-13, 2010 in Miami, Florida. The abstract summarizing the findings of the study received one of the ten 2010 Annual Scientific Awards from SCCM, out of the 1,240 abstracts submitted to the congress. The abstract will be published in the supplement of the Critical Care Medicine Journal in December 2009.
The focus areas of the Children's/Georgia Tech team's ongoing collaboration include physician workflow issues, scheduling and patient handoff efficiencies, and inter-unit patient flow.
]]>The Nash professorship was created through a faculty endowment established by H. RonaldNash (IE 1970), Deborah Nash Harris (IE 1978) and Michael R. Nash (IE 1974), the children of Mary Anne and Harold R. Nash (EE 1952), in honor of their parents.
“Our parents were smart, disciplined, and high achievers,” stated the Nash siblings. “It is gratifying for us to have Dr. Keskinocak hold the professorship named after them as she carries the same outstanding attributes. She embodies the intellectual curiosity and disciplined hard work that we saw in our parents. Her work with her team to break new ground in humanitarian logistics is impressive and something that we are gratified to support. We expect great things in the future from her as she continues to solve such huge and pressing problems in our world today.”
The Nash family has a longstanding and deep connection to Georgia Tech, having had three generations educated here and launched into successful careers. “Our parents started this trend,” the Nashes share, “and it is one that we and our children have benefited from significantly. Through this professorship we honor their paving the way for the following generations. We are excited to be able to support Georgia Tech.”
Pinar Keskinocak, along with Health and Humanitarian Logistic Center co-directors Özlem Ergun and Julie Swann, have a passion for applying their industrial engineering and operations research knowledge and expertise in ways that will have a positive global impact. They have developed an astute awareness of the issues associated in areas such as health and humanitarian logistics, environmental degradation, and education.
“I am honored to be named the Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Professor,” said Professor Keskinocak. “The opportunities to make a difference in the humanitarian response and world health sectors are vast. Through the Nash family support, I, my colleagues, and our students, will be able to expand our reach and impact by pushing the boundaries of our research and education in this field.”
Professor Keskinocak’s research focuses on supply chain management, with an emphasis on resource allocation, and she is actively engaged in research and applications in healthcare and humanitarian logistics. She received B.S. and M.S. degrees in industrial engineering from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, in 1991 and 1992, and a Ph.D. in operations research from Carnegie Mellon University in 1997. Before joining Georgia Tech, she was with IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
]]>Mel Hall is a major concept contributor for the Workforce Health Assessment Model (WHAM) developed by the Health Systems Institute at Georgia Tech. The project's objective is to develop a new workforce health assessment model to provide employers the ability to estimate workforce health risk and assist in the determination and selection of cost-effective strategies to reduce those health risks and the associated long-term workforce health costs. To educate employers and assist them in making optimal decisions regarding resource allocation among various workforce health risk management strategies, the project proposes to develop, in partnership with Comprehensive Health Services, Inc., a predictive model. This model will support the identification and quantification of health risks associated with the workforce and will provide the basis for a proactive analysis of the cost-effectiveness of various strategies and programs, in particular, programs designed to prevent and/or reduce those risks.
ABOUT MEL HALL
Mr. Hall is the Chairman and CEO of Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. (CHS), the industry's trusted provider of onsite health centers and national examination programs. CHS is an organization that focuses on prevention, wellness and primary care programs. His responsibilities at CHS include corporate strategy and financial oversight. Over the past five years, Mr. Hall has been part of CHS' team developing an analytical and management approach for changing the corporate onsite health care delivery model and health cost dynamics. Mel received a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering degree from Georgia Tech in 1967 and a M.S. degree in Engineering Management from the University of Alaska in 1970. He is a U.S. Army veteran.
Determining the most common illnesses affecting the workplace-and the best strategies to reduce these risks-is the goal of a new health assessment model developed by Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. (CHS), a leading national workforce health management company, and the Health Systems Institute (HSI) at Georgia Tech and Emory University.
A first-of-its-kind project, the Workforce Health Assessment Model (WHAM) is currently in use with select CHS clients. WHAM provides the ability to estimate various health risks in the workplace and assists in finding cost-effective strategies to reduce those risks and the burdensome long-term costs.
"By identifying the prevalence of the most expensive medical conditions faced by employees, our model enables organizations to proactively analyze the cost-effectiveness of various health programs and strategies, in particular, programs designed to prevent and/or reduce those risks," said Leanne Metcalfe, Ph.D., a research engineer with HSI whose thesis work formed the basis for the model.
WHAM represents an opportunity not only for employers, but researchers aiming to map out research models that analyze and anticipate various trends.
"For the academic community, it provides a template of how abstract statistical research in predictive modeling meets challenges of real-life tests for its quality and performance," said Brani Vidakovic, Professor of Bioengineering Statistics at The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and an HSI researcher notes. "I am pleased to see that WHAM meets these challenges and we at HSI are committed to support and further fine-tune the model."
With the project now complete, the model will enter its second phase of development, which involves CHS and Georgia Tech researchers enhancing and refining the model. Planned improvements include incorporating richer demographic data, enabling meta-analysis by geographic region and industry type, and support for real-time updates.
"CHS is investing in this remarkable project because we believe that onsite health centers can greatly impact the cost and quality of care for employees, retirees and dependents,
]]>Ms. Bennett is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow pursuing a PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering with an emphasis in Logistics. She is advised by Dr. Alan Erera in her dissertation work on home health nurse routing and scheduling problems. Ashlea's graduate research is currently sponsored by Visiting Nurse|Hospice Atlanta (VN|HA), a large non-profit home care organization. She is directing a project focused on congestive heart failure (CHF) patient care with VN|HA and a local hospital. Project objectives include reducing the hospital length of stay for CHF patients, and designing mechanisms that improve coordination of CHF patient care across the continuum from hospital to home.
About HIMSS
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is the healthcare industry's membership organization exclusively focused on providing global leadership for the optimal use of healthcare information technology (IT) and management systems for the betterment of healthcare. HIMSS represents 25,000 Healthcare Information and Systems Management (Management Engineers) professionals. There are 20+ Tech Alum currently involved in various leadership roles in the organization.
About HIMSS Foundation
Established in 1986, the HIMSS Foundation serves as the philanthropic arm of HIMSS, providing support and assistance to the industry and its members through: financial assistance, scholarships, to students in healthcare-IT related fields; providing access for students and governmental agencies to free industry data; and providing financial relief/assistance for special need-based programs and issues. Projects that the Foundation supports include: scholarships for students in healthcare IT-related fields, and relief and assistance for need-based programs such as the Katrina Phoenix Project.
Since 1985, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATDSR) have presented the Charles C. Shepard Science Award to authors of the most outstanding peer-reviewed research papers published by CDC/ATDSR scientists during the preceding year. The award recognizes scientific achievement and honors the memory of Dr. Charles C. Shepard, whose career was marked by the pursuit of academic excellence. In addition to honoring publications in three categories - Assessment and Epidemiology, Prevention and Control, and Laboratory and Methods - there is also an award for Lifetime Scientific Achievement.
Nomination for the Shepard award is, in itself, an honor and the winners for the different categories will not be revealed until the ceremony which takes place June 29, 2009 at the Tom Harkin Global Communications Center on the Roybal Campus at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
MORE ABOUT DR. VIDAKOVIC
Brani Vidakovic is a Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University and Director of the Health Systems Institute Center for Biostatistics and Data Management. Dr. Vidakovic came to Georgia Tech from Duke University, where he had been an Assistant Professor and tenured Associate Professor. Dr. Vidakovic holds a Ph.D. in statistics from Purdue University and his research areas include
Bayesian modeling and decision theory, clinical trials, health statistics, wavelets and multiscale modeling, high frequency data modeling, analysis of biomedical signals and images, statistical learning and data mining, and statistics of turbulent flows. He is a Fellow of American Statistical Association, an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute and associate editor for Journal of the American Statistical Association, Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Communications in Statistics, and Bayesian Statistics.
To view the list of the proposals that will receive funding, please visit the 2009-10 HSI Seed Grant area with the HSI website to view the proposals.
About the Seed Grant Program
In collaboration with the colleges of Architecture, Computing, Engineering, Management, Sciences as well as Research Centers (GVU & GTISC) at GT, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), Emory University's School of Nursing, the Georgia Tech and Emory University Predictive Health Institute (PHI), Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (Children's) and Atlanta Veteran's Administration R&D Center of Excellence (Atlanta VA RR&D CoE), the Health Systems Institute (HSI) has established a seed grant funding program to support collaborative and interdisciplinary research projects that will help stimulate innovative healthcare research and promote improvements in healthcare. The seed grant awards are specifically designed to provide funding for novel projects that demonstrate a high potential for enhanced diagnostic capabilities of diseases, lead to new inventions that yield new patents, licenses and/or commercial products, lead to high quality peer-reviewed publications and those with high potential to leverage seed funding into extra-mural support.
Abstract: For millions of people, motor impairments diminish quality of life, reduce independence, and increase healthcare costs. Assistive mobile robots that manipulate objects within everyday settings have the potential to improve quality of life by augmenting people's abilities with a cooperative robot. In spite of this promising opportunity, autonomous mobile robots are not yet robust enough for daily operation in real homes. The proposed research directly addresses the challenges of achieving this competence through novel, innovative research that combines RFID-based sensing with autonomous mobile manipulation. Key insights of the proposed work are that the current range of ultra-high frequency passive RFID 'smart labels' makes it feasible for robots to read them from across a room and that their low cost (sub-$0.25) means they can be ubiquitously attached to important objects throughout the home. The unambiguous digital signals available from tagged objects could be profoundly enabling for an assistive robot in three ways which this research will investigate and exploit: (1) scanning a room to provide reliable unique identification of important tagged objects so the robot can provide the user with a menu of available objects and be informed about the objects (e.g., their appearance and appropriate manipulative actions) (2) long-range localization of a tagged object based on its signal characteristics so the robot can approach the object and (3) short-range localization and identification through novel finger-mounted antennas to help the robot manipulate the object, including grasping it and confirming that it has been grasped. We will research these transformative capabilities for assistive robots in the context of object retrieval. Our studies with physically-impaired patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) from the Emory ALS Center clearly demonstrate that object retrieval via an autonomous mobile robot would be a valued assistive technology, and these capabilities could serve as a foundation upon which other assistive services could be built. We will evaluate the RFID guided robot that results from this research with ALS patients. The robot will include a novel menu-driven user interface that will enable a physically-impaired user to easily select an object and an appropriate delivery method. After this selection, the robot will find, approach, grasp, and deliver the requested object.
Investigators: Charles Kemp (GT, Robotics) and Matt Reynolds (GT, Computing)
2007-2008 HSI Seed Grant: Robust People Following via RFID for Assistive Mobile Robots
Dr. Melissa Kemp has been honored with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director's "New Innovator" award.
Abstract: Elevated concentrations of extracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) are hallmarks of inflammation, and decades of medical research have focused on suppression of these molecules to treat pathologies as diverse as rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, and atherosclerosis with mixed results. More recently, researchers have discovered that these same molecules are produced during the course of normal signal transduction. In order to effectively treat inflammation, we must understand these distinct roles for reactive oxygen species. I propose an innovative research program that will elucidate the role of hydrogen peroxide, a key ROS, in normal cell signaling through computational models and laboratory experiments. This research will lead to a new, quantitative understanding of ROS and facilitate the development of effective antioxidant treatments for inflammation. This project will use three complementary approaches to evaluate the complex regulatory role of hydrogen peroxide on receptor-induced signaling. First, we will develop computational network models describing redox regulation of proteins in a time-dependent manner. Secondly, we are designing new methods to detect oxidative changes on multiple proteins simultaneously. These assays will allow investigation of the relationships between phosphorylation of signal transduction molecules and reversible thiol modifications. Finally, we have created a series of cell lines in which key components of the redox network have been perturbed that demonstrate augmentation and attenuation of receptor signaling. These lines will be used to systematically investigate the efficiency of three receptor networks-a pro-inflammatory cue (TNF-α), anti-inflammatory cue (TGF-β), and antigenic response (TCR)-under different oxidative environments. The results of these studies will provide the first computational modeling platform capable of interpreting incongruous literature reports of oxidative effects on cellular information processing. This project leverages my unique experience at the interface of immunology, systems biology, and metabolism to address a fundamental mechanism of cellular regulation critical for a large class of therapeutic drugs.
Investigator: Melissa Kemp (GT/Emory, Biomedical Engineering)
2007-2008 HSI Seed Grant: Evaluation and Modeling of Redox Regulation of NF-kappaB in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia cells: Role in Drug Resistance
About the Health Systems InstituteThe award will be formally presented during the Society's Poster Award Presentation to be held on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 in conjunction with the 39th Critical Care Congress. In addition to Dr. Vats and Professor Keskinocak, other team members include Monica Villareal and Tuba Yilmaz (Ph.D. students in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering) and Kristin Hermann Goin (a graduate of Georgia Tech's Masters in Health Systems program and currently a service consultant at Children's). Congratulations to the team on this award.
ABOUT SCCM
The Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) is the largest multiprofessional organization dedicated to ensuring excellence and consistency in the practice of critical care. With 14,000 members in 80 countries, SCCM is the only organization that represents all professional components of the critical care team. The Society offers a variety of activities that promote excellence in patient care, education, research, and advocacy.
PBS NewsHour Extra featured the effort in one of its stories, "No Insurance, On Borneo the Doc Takes Manure". Visit the PBS NewsHour Extra Video Clipboard to view a short video clip.
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