s
Supporting Hospital Response to COVID-19
G
eorge Mason University Professor Elise
Miller-Hooks and her
team have been studying and modeling the flow of patients
through American hospitals in
Miller-Hooks began incorporating personal protective equipment, ventilators, and COVID-19
patients with their care paths into the models.
times of crisis since 2014.
“We’re working as fast as we can
Now, in the face of the COVID-19
and the crisis is enormous. This
pandemic, they are collaborating with Mersedeh Tariverdi, a
senior data scientist in the Health,
Nutrition, and Population Group at the World Bank, to launch a web portal—the MASH-Pandemics
portal—that will support models that aid hospital responses to the pandemic.
The team’s work supports
evidence-based decision making,
informed by the models, to rethink and facilitate hospital operations in utilizing limited critical
resources as demand surges.
because the need is so urgent
effort is about health care worker safety and helping the hospitals cope with the pandemic,” says
Miller-Hooks. “It’s about saving
lives, as well as the efficient and
equitable allocation of resources.” The work can help hospitals to best cope with surge demand in spite of limited resources.
It can aid decision makers in
regional response and hospital
collaboration planning with health care facilities that offer various levels of care (e.g., primary health care).
Only hours after President
It can also inform decisions
national emergency on March 13,
supplies, supplemental space,
Donald Trump declared a
graduate students working with
While working as a PhD student under Elise Miller-Hooks’s supervision, Mersedeh Tariverdi (above) developed key models that now serve as the backbone for the portal.
on the mobilization of critical and the dispatch of frontline
health care workers and other first responders to where they are needed the most.
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