Fitzpatrick Gabriel, Decroo Tom, Draguez Bertrand, Crestani Rosa, Ronsse Axelle, Van den Bergh Rafael, Van Herp Michel
Emerg Infect Dis. 2017 Jul;23(7):1057-1062. doi: 10.3201/eid2307.161389.
Operational research aims to identify interventions, strategies, or tools that can enhance the quality, effectiveness, or coverage of programs where the research is taking place. Médecins Sans Frontières admitted ≈5,200 patients with confirmed Ebola virus disease during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and from the beginning nested operational research within its emergency response. This research covered critical areas, such as understanding how the virus spreads, clinical trials, community perceptions, challenges within Ebola treatment centers, and negative effects on non-Ebola healthcare. Importantly, operational research questions were decided to a large extent by returning volunteers who had first-hand knowledge of the immediate issues facing teams in the field. Such a method is appropriate for an emergency medical organization. Many challenges were also identified while carrying out operational research across 3 different countries, including the basic need for collecting data in standardized format to enable comparison of findings among treatment centers.
运筹学旨在确定能够提高研究开展所在地项目的质量、有效性或覆盖范围的干预措施、策略或工具。在西非埃博拉疫情期间，无国界医生组织收治了约5200例确诊埃博拉病毒病患者，并从一开始就在其应急响应中纳入了运筹学研究。这项研究涵盖了关键领域，如了解病毒传播方式、临床试验、社区认知、埃博拉治疗中心面临的挑战以及对非埃博拉医疗保健的负面影响。重要的是，运筹学问题在很大程度上由有实地团队面临的直接问题的第一手知识的归国志愿者决定。这种方法适用于紧急医疗组织。在三个不同国家开展运筹学研究的过程中也发现了许多挑战，包括以标准化格式收集数据以便能够比较各治疗中心研究结果的基本需求。
