Hu Audrey, Casey Daniel, Toyoji Mariko, Brown Alicia, Elsenboss Carina
Audrey E. Hu, MPH, is an Epidemiologist, Washington State Department of Health, Seattle, WA.
Daniel C Casey, MPH, is an Epidemiologists, Assessment, Policy Development, and Evaluation Unit, Public Health - Seattle & King County, Seattle, WA.
Health Secur. 2023 Mar-Apr;21(2):156-163. doi: 10.1089/hs.2022.0115. Epub 2023 Jan 30.
The COVID-19 pandemic created an extraordinarily high demand for personal protective equipment (PPE). Acute need and supply chain disruptions made hospitals, emergency medical services, and other critical care agencies particularly vulnerable to PPE shortages. In March 2020, King County, Washington, developed computational tools, operating procedures, and data visualizations to fulfill its responsibilities to prioritize, allocate, and distribute scarce PPE equitably and efficiently during a public health emergency. King County distributed over 1.6 million gowns, 22 million gloves, 3.9 million surgical masks, and 1.5 million N95 respirators (among other items) during its PPE distribution mission. An algorithm processed resource requests from the community, with respect to available inventory, emergency allocation policies, prioritization constraints, estimated PPE use rates, agency-specific needs, and other parameters. With these inputs and constraints, the requests were translated into instructions for fulfillment and delivery and several tabular and graphical data visualizations were produced for quality assurance and transparency. Access to timely, relevant, and stable data was a constant challenge, and constraints invariably changed as the emergency response unfolded. King County's PPE distribution mission provides a useful case study in how to develop a scalable and data-driven approach to resource allocation and distribution under emergency response conditions.
新冠疫情引发了对个人防护装备（PPE）的极高需求。迫切的需求和供应链中断使医院、紧急医疗服务机构及其他重症护理机构尤其容易受到个人防护装备短缺的影响。2020年3月，华盛顿州金县开发了计算工具、操作程序和数据可视化手段，以履行其在公共卫生紧急事件期间公平、高效地对稀缺的个人防护装备进行优先排序、分配和分发的职责。在个人防护装备分发任务期间，金县分发了超过160万件隔离衣、2200万副手套、390万个外科口罩和150万个N95口罩（以及其他物品）。一种算法根据可用库存、紧急分配政策、优先排序限制、预计的个人防护装备使用率、特定机构需求及其他参数处理来自社区的资源请求。基于这些输入信息和限制条件，请求被转化为执行和交付指令，并生成了一些表格和图形数据可视化内容，以确保质量和透明度。获取及时、相关且稳定的数据始终是一项挑战，而且随着应急响应的展开，限制条件也总是不断变化。金县的个人防护装备分发任务为如何在应急响应条件下开发一种可扩展且以数据为驱动的资源分配和分发方法提供了一个有益的案例研究。
