RAPID: Rapid Monitoring and Assessment of Critical Pharmaceutical Supply Chains

在过去的十年中，美国一直经历着严重的治疗药物短缺，危及患者护理，并由于医疗保健成本增加而减少了经济繁荣。作为全国第一波感染的一部分，目前的COVID-19疫情有可能使大型城市中心的医院药品和治疗药物供应不堪重负。 治疗COVID-19疾病的有效药物目前正在开发或处于测试阶段，导致供应非常有限，这一事实加剧了这种情况。 这项快速反应研究（RAPID）赠款将收集与医院药房在大流行期间分发这些关键治疗药物时的运营相关的有用的、时间敏感的数据。 对这些数据的分析将提供对药品供应网络的深入了解，目标是打破重复和经常性短缺的循环，正如FDA药品短缺工作组在2019年的报告中所指出的那样。PI将收集关于现有和新兴治疗药物的库存和分布的定量和定性信息，以记录大型城市医院系统中稀缺药物向住院患者的分配情况。 关于需求和供应的定量数据（医生订单、当前和预测库存水平、可用供应商、价格等）将通过与马萨诸塞州总医院和在线药物交换平台OrbitalRx的合作收集。此外，将从药剂师的记录和与药房人员的访谈中收集定性信息，这些记录了与向患有COVID-19的重症患者分配稀缺治疗资源相关的决策过程和工作流程。 该研究预计将有助于确定信息流和决策支持模型中的差距，这些模型对极端情况下的药物短缺管理至关重要。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

Over the past decade, the U.S. has persistently experienced significant therapeutic drug shortages, jeopardizing patient care and diminishing economic prosperity due to increased healthcare costs. The current COVID-19 epidemic threatens to overwhelm hospital supplies of medicines and therapeutics in large urban centers as part of the first wave of infections across the country. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that effective medicines to treat COVID-19 disease are currently under development or in testing phases, resulting in very limited supplies. This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grant will collect useful, time-sensitive data related to operations of hospital pharmacies as they dispense these critical therapeutics during the pandemic. The analysis of these data will provide insight into the pharmaceutical supply networks with the goal of breaking the cycle of repeated and recurrent shortages, as pointed out in the FDA's Drug Shortage Task Force's report in 2019. The PIs will collect quantitative and qualitative information on the inventories and distribution of available and emerging therapeutics to document the allocation of scarce medicines to hospital patients in a large urban hospital system. Quantitative data on demand and supply (physicians' orders, current and forecast inventory levels, available suppliers, prices, etc.) will be collected through a collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital and OrbitalRx, an online pharmaceutical exchange platform. In addition, qualitative information will be collected from pharmacists' notes and interviews with pharmacy personnel that documents the decision-making processes and workflows associated with allocating scarce therapeutics resources to critically ill patients suffering from COVID-19. The research is expected to help identify gaps in information flows and decision-support models that are most critical for the management of drug shortages under extreme circumstances.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.