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

应对2019冠状病毒病大流行的一个主要挑战是通过使用和供应个人防护设备（PPE）来确保医护人员的安全。目前，美国的医疗保健机构严重缺乏PPE，部分原因是依赖一次性PPE，必须补充PPE。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PPE的基线需求的根本转变。这项工作的主要目标是对医院的弹性产生新的见解，作为他们如何满足其基本PPE需求的函数，同时告知医院如何在当前的大流行期间提高其弹性，并通过众包信息吸引公众参与，了解要求公民自制PPE的医疗保健系统的数量。本项目将量化一次性使用和可重复使用个人防护设备的等效生命周期，以及医院在大流行事件中使用可重复使用个人防护设备的弹性增加。生命周期评估将与基于代理的建模相结合，以产生新的基本见解，由于可重复使用的PPE的基线使用，医院系统的弹性的潜在变化。这些见解可能有助于抵御当前的流行病和未来预期的流行病。采用一次性PPE和其他医疗用品主要是出于对医疗获得性感染的关注。然而，在需求激增的时期，例如大流行期间，由于多家医院的竞争性需求和缺乏可用的供应，这可能导致缺乏可用的PPE。该研究的方法是三重的：（1）生成关于在流行病环境中可重复使用与一次性使用PPE的生命周期的综合数据，（2）创建关于医院的弹性的新见解，作为满足其可重复使用的基本负载PPE需求的函数，以及（3）产生关于医院供应线的真实的时间稳定性的众包信息，作为对市民制造的PPE的请求的函数。这项工作建议评估医院的弹性，由于在流行病期间对PPE的需求激增，以及医院满足这些需求的能力。这将为评估危机情况下可重复使用和一次性使用医疗用品之间的当前争论提供新的方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。

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.