Drilling for disaster

In the event of an emergency, swarms of people will turn to Point of Distribution sites expecting to receive medicine. In order to handle these chaotic crowds, states and institutions all over the country will turn to technology developed by university professor Jeffrey Herrmann to quickly and effectively combat wide-spread illness.

Herrmann, a mechanical engineering professor, began developing software in 2004 that allows health officials to treat masses of people in the event of an emergency. Since then, 25 states have utilized the software, known as the Clinic Planning Model Generator, in their emergency POD sites. This university, which serves as a POD site for the community, also used Herrmann’s technology to test-drive its disaster readiness last month.

In the University Health Center’s seasonal flu shot drill Oct. 15, the planning program was used to predict the flow of the expected thousands of people in and out of Ritchie Coliseum. Although 2,000 free vaccinations were offered to students, faculty and staff, only about 930 people actually received flu shots.

The drill’s setup, predetermined by the health center’s planning committee and Herrmann’s model, was used to confirm pre-established drill arrangements, Assistant Director to Health Promotion Kelly Kesler said.

“We wanted to see if Dr. Herrmann would confirm what we already came up with and to see if we needed to make any adjustments,” she said.

Kesler said the model confirmed the planning committee’s predictions, but found that the committee planned to use too many volunteers for the drill and that time could be saved if volunteers and staff reminded drill participants to “roll up their sleeve” before they get to the flu shot station.

Herrmann was first enlisted in emergency preparedness work in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the anthrax scare that followed. State and county health departments nationally were charged with redrafting their plans for emergency vaccine distribution.

In Montgomery County, Public Health Services officials asked Herrmann to come up with a mathematical model to predict the number of volunteers and supplies they would need, as well as the best way to lay out the POD site.

Herrmann and a group of graduate apprentices began developing a model that would later be used at a mock smallpox drill in Silver Spring.

“Montgomery County was holding a drill, but didn’t give out real shots,” Herrmann said. “They set up a mass vaccination clinic in a high school in Silver Spring, and had residents and county officials go through the clinic as if they were getting a smallpox vaccination.”

After the drill, county officials said the program was too slow and not user-friendly. Herrmann and his apprentices then went back to the drawing board, he said, and worked on similar software that was faster and easier to use.

The revised version of his program used Microsoft Excel. It allowed users to enter “known population information and set up specific time constraints” and receive immediate results “showing suggested staff levels and detailed clinic information regarding waiting times, queue lengths and cycle time,” Herrmann said.

He completed the Excel-based Clinic Planning Model Generator in 2008, receiving the Innovator of the Year Award from The Daily Record for his work.

Since then, Herrmann has been working to develop a website on which the clinic planning model and other models intended to better serve health officials and patients in a time of crisis would be available.

“Our next step is to look at distribution of medicine from a depot to multiple clinics,” Herrmann said. “Our goal is to develop models that are useful for health officials so they can make better decisions and protect the public.”

But no matter how widespread its appeal, Herrmann said the generator isn’t perfect — the program does not account for people showing up early to a clinic.

During the university’s seasonal flu shot drill, there was a line of people waiting outside the entrance of the clinic 15 minutes before the drill’s planned start, which meant the first waves of participants did not benefit from six- to seven-minute wait times that people had later on, he said.

“We’ve found people always show up early, so the hard part is estimating how many people will show up early,” Herrmann said.

botelho at umdbk dot com