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The Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory is a constituent laboratory of the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland.


Using Operations Research to Improve Mass Dispensing and Vaccination Clinic Planning

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Abstract

To react to an outbreak of a contagious disease that requires medication or vaccination, county health departments must setup and operate mass dispensing and vaccination clinics. Carefully planning these clinics before an event occurs is a difficult and important job. This paper describes the development of operations research models for this problem and the use of these tools to improve clinic planning. These tools include capacity planning models, discrete-event simulation models, and queueing system approximations. This work is the result of an ongoing collaboration between the University of Maryland, College Park, and the Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Health Services.

Download: Click on the following link to download the paper, which is in PDF format.

Copyright Notice: This paper appears in Interfaces, Volume 36, Number 6, pages 569-579, 2006. Personal use of this material is permitted. Any other uses require permission of the copyright holder.

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank all those who helped in the data collection and modeling processes described in the paper, especially Daniel T. Cook, a student at Kalamazoo College, whose time at the University of Maryland was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant EEC 02-43803. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

The modeling work was conducted in the facilities of the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory, a constituent lab of the Institute for Systems Research. Cooperative Agreement Number U50/CCU302718 from the CDC to NACCHO supported this publication. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the University of Maryland and the Advanced Practice Center for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response of Montgomery County, Maryland, and do not necessarily represent the official views of CDC or NACCHO.

The authors appreciate the assistance of all who helped set up and perform the time study, including Jo Jo Chamandy, Judy Covich, Lori Beth Hook, Randle Bell, Ashley Collinson, Michelle Edwards, Quaila Denning, Darren Doye, Michael Engram, Daniel Fitzgerald, Gina Gouker, Nils Klinkenberg, Geoff Kung, Joanna Meador, Melaine Moeller, Hans Moore, and Noah Stevens.


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Last updated by Jeffrey W. Herrmann, January 11, 2007.

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