RAPID: Influence of reusable personal protective equipment on resilience of hospitals in a pandemic

应对新冠肺炎大流行的一项重大挑战是通过使用和供应个人防护装备来确保卫生保健人员的安全。目前，美国所有医疗机构的个人防护装备严重短缺，部分原因是依赖一次性个人防护装备，而一次性个人防护装备必须补充。为了增加医疗保健系统的弹性，可以通过利用可重复使用的选项来满足满足个人防护装备基线需求的根本转变。这项工作的主要目标是对医院作为如何满足其基线个人防护需求的功能的复原力产生新的见解，同时告知医院如何在当前的大流行中提高其复原力，并通过众包信息吸引公众参与，了解有多少医疗保健系统需要公民制造的个人防护装置。该项目将量化一次性使用和可重复使用的个人防护设备的等效生命周期，以及医院因在大流行事件中使用可重复使用的个人防护设备而增加的复原力。生命周期评估将与基于代理的建模相结合，以生成关于可重复使用PPE的基线使用导致的医院系统弹性的潜在变化的新的基本见解。这些见解可能有助于经受住当前的大流行和未来预期的大流行。一次性个人防护用品和其他医疗用品被采用，主要是出于对医疗保健获得性感染的担忧。然而，在需求激增的时候，例如在大流行期间，由于多家医院的竞争需求和可用的供应不足，这可能导致缺乏可用的个人防护装备。这项研究的方法有三个方面：(1)生成关于大流行背景下可重复使用与一次性使用的个人防护设备生命周期的综合数据；(2)创建关于医院作为使用可重复使用的个人防护设备满足其基本负载个人防护设备需求的功能的弹性的新洞察力；以及(3)生成关于作为公民制造的个人防护设备需求的功能的医院供应线的实时稳定性的众包信息。这项工作建议评估医院在大流行期间由于个人防护用品需求激增而产生的弹性，以及医院满足这些需求的能力。这将导致在危机情况下评估当前可重复使用和一次性使用医疗用品之间的争论的新方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A major challenge in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic is keeping health care workers safe through the usage and supply of personal protective equipment (PPE). There is currently a severe shortage of PPE across health care facilities in the United States, in part due to a reliance on disposable PPE, which must be replenished. In order to increase the resiliency of the healthcare system, a fundamental shift for meeting the baseline demand of PPE may be met by utilizing reusable options. The main goal of this work is to generate new insight on the resilience of hospitals as a function of how they meet their baseline PPE demand, while informing hospitals how to increase their resiliency during this current pandemic, and engaging the public through crowd sourcing information as to the number of health care systems requesting citizen-made PPE. This project will quantify the equivalent life cycles of single use and reusable PPE, and the increase in the resiliency of a hospital as a function of its usage of reusable PPE in pandemic events. Life cycle assessment will be coupled with agent based modeling to generate new fundamental insight as to the potential shifts in the resiliency of a hospital system due to the baseline usage of reusable PPE. These insights may help to weather the current pandemic and future anticipated pandemics. Disposable PPE and other medical supplies have been adopted largely out of a concern for healthcare acquired infections. However, in a time of great surges in demand, such as those which occur during a pandemic, this can result in a lack of available PPE due to competing demands from multiple hospitals and a lack of available supplies. The approach of the study is 3-fold: (1) generate comprehensive data as to the life cycle of reusable versus single use PPE in a pandemic setting, (2) create new insight as to the resiliency of hospitals as a function of meeting their baseload PPE demand with reusables, and (3) generate crowd sourced information as to the real time stability of hospital supply lines as a function of requests for citizen – made PPE. This work proposes to assess the resiliency of a hospital due to surges in demand for PPE during a pandemic, and the ability of the hospital to meet those needs. This will result in new ways of evaluating the current debate between reusable and single use medical supplies in a crisis situation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.