Penn State National Science Foundation Center for Health Organization Transformation
(Penn State CHOT) - An Industry-University Cooperative Research Center
|
|
Penn State CHOT Research Highlights
|
|
|
NSF-Funded Rapid Response Project - "Continuous flow simulation modeling and analysis of human traffic and virus spread dynamics in spatial networks"
Penn State CHOT rapid response team, including
Dr. Hui Yang (CHOT), Dr. Chris DeFlitch (emergency medicine), Dr. Yunfeng Shi (health policy) and Dr. Dennis Scanlan (health policy), along with CHOT Scholars, Marta Ventura and Yidan Wang, will explore the simulation modeling and data analytics for combating COVID-19 crisis.
Coronavirus is changing the world and impacting the health of our society. There is an urgent need to leverage data analytics and simulation models to gain a better understanding of virus spreading dynamics. The objective of this research project is to develop continuous flow simulation modeling and analysis of human traffic and virus spread dynamics in spatial networks. Specifically, we will investigate the derivation of health policies and infectious disease control, akin to making informed decisions, such that the health care system can respond expeditiously and effectively to disruptive events. The proposed project will study three sets of policy-relevant characteristics that are central to the understanding of the impact of public interventions on virus spread, namely regional infrastructure of health care delivery, regulatory measures to slow down the virus spread, and effectiveness of information transparency. As the dynamics of infectious diseases often change over time, simulation models, and analytical algorithms from this project help support decision-making in real time. The proposed methodology is generally applicable to a wide range of infectious diseases. Effective simulation analysis and prediction of virus positions in geographic regions will not only help optimize the design of health care policies to control the propagation of infectious diseases, but also help safeguard the U.S. population and make health systems more resilient to disruptive events.
Research Team:
Dr. Hui Yang
currently serves as the principal investigator (PI) and site director of NSF C
HOT. His research interests focus on sensor-based modeling and analysis of nonlinear stochastic dynamics in complex healthcare systems towards process monitoring, process control, health prognostics, quality improvement, and performance optimization. His research program is supported by National Science Foundation (including the prestigious NSF CAREER award), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Lockheed Martin, NSF center for e-Design, Susan Koman Cancer Foundation, NSF Center for Healthcare Organization Transformation, Institute of Cyberscience, James A. Harley Veterans Hospital, and Florida James and Esther King Biomedical research program. His research group received a number of best paper awards and best poster awards from IISE Annual Conference, IEEE EMBC, IEEE CASE, and INFORMS.
Dr. Chris DeFlitch
is the Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) at Hershey Medical Center and co-PI and co-Founder of Penn State CHOT. DeFlitch served as an emergency physician at Hershey since 1998, after residency at University of Massachusetts Medical Center and one year in private practice. After five years in the role of physician leader for information systems for he agreed to the CMIO role to further the mission of changing health care by engineering the processes of care with IT. In 2009, he co-founded the Center for Integrated Healthcare Delivery Systems (CIHDS), now CHOT, as a venue for students and faculty to collaborate on the complex issue of health care.
Dr. Yunfeng Shi i
s research focuses on health care policies and interventions. He is leading several studies aimed at understanding the role of Health Information Technology (HIT) in the performance of health care delivery systems, as well as patient flows in a network of rural hospitals. Shi has a keen interest in understanding the dynamics of how coronavirus spreads across regions, adjacent and remote. In particular, his expertise in health care policy research would help to frame the investigation from the following three important perspectives: the regional infrastructure of health care delivery, the potential local regulatory measures to slow down the coronavirus spread, and the effectiveness of information transparency.
Dr. Dennis Scanlon
is a distinguished professor of health policy and administration and has been the director of PSU Center for Health Care and Policy Research since July 1, 2014. His research focuses on understanding the role of measurement, incentives, quality improvement, and individual and organizational behavior change for improving important health care outcomes, including clinical quality, patient experience, and economic efficiency. Scanlon serves on the editorial board of journals, such as Medical Care Research and Review, the American Journal of Managed Care and Health Services Research. He is currently serving as associate editor at the American Journal of Managed Care and senior associate editor at Health Services Research.
|
|
New CHOT scholars:
Marta Ventura is a doctoral student in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Penn State. She received her bachelor of science in industrial engineering from Penn State in May 2005. She has worked as a senior revenue management analyst for the Walter Disney Company for five years. She joined the Complex Systems Lab and Penn State CHOT in March 2020, and she will work on data analytics and health policy for the NSF RAPID project "Continuous flow simulation modeling and analysis of human traffic and virus spread dynamics in spatial networks". She will study data-driven
health coordination policies and infectious disease control, akin to making informed decisions, such that the health care system is more resilient and can respond expeditiously and effectively to disruptive events.
|
Yidan Wang is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Penn State. She received her bachelor of science in industrial engineering from Penn State in May 2019. She joined the Complex Systems Lab and Penn State CHOT in February 2020, and is currently working on the project of simulation modeling of COVID-19 pandemic. She will develop continuous flow models for simulation of human traffic and coronavirus spread dynamics, prediction of real-time positions of infected population in the spatial network, and provide decision support tools for the design of health care policies under disruptive events and processes.
|
Network Modeling and Internet of Things for Smart and Connected Health Systems - A Case Study for Smart Heart Health Monitoring and Management
Hui Yang, Chen Kan, Alexander Krall, and Dan Finke developed a novel parallel computing framework to leverage the large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) for building smart and connected health systems.
Heart disease is a leading cause of death in the US. Smart health management calls upon effective monitoring and timely detection of disease-altered cardiac activities. Recent advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) provide a great opportunity to realize smart and connected health systems through IoT monitoring and sensor-based data analytics for early detection of disease patterns. However, big data arising from the large-scale IoT system pose a significant challenge for efficient and effective sensor-based information processing and decision making. Very little has been done to glean pertinent information about the disease-altered cardiac activity in the context of large-scale IoT network.
This study provides a parallel computing framework for multi-level network modeling and monitoring of cardiac activities to realize the potential of IoT-enabled smart health management.
Specifically, dissimilarities among cardiac signals are firstly characterized among heartbeats for an individual patient, as well as among representative heartbeats for different patients. Then, a stochastic learning approach is developed to optimize the embedding of cardiac signals into a beat-to-beat (B2B) network model, as well as a patient-to-patient (P2P) network model. Further, a parallel computing algorithm is designed and developed to improve the computational efficiency of network modeling. Finally, a statistical process monitoring scheme is designed and developed to harness network features for real-time monitoring and anomaly detection of cardiac activities. Experimental results show the developed scheme has strong potential for realizing a smart and interconnected system for cardiac health management in the context of large-scale IoT network.
This research has been published in IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering. Click here for the full-text article.
|
|
Influenza Pandemics and COVID-19
In response to COVID-19, Dr. Hui Yang, the site director of CHOT at Penn State, created a video to compare the influenza pandemics and COVID-19.
Influenza pandemics are inevitable, and naturally recurring at relatively cyclical intervals. The pandemic flu clock is always ticking, and we just don't know what time it will come. In this challenging time, one way to reduce anxiety and stress is a better understanding of influenza pandemics. This video will answer the following questions: (1) Is the coronavirus like flu? (2) What are past pandemics? (3) The history of killer flu virus behind the 1918 pandemic. (4) What is the flu family tree (swine flu, bird flu, and H flu)? (5) What are type A, B, C flu viruses? (6) What are nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)? (7) What is the impact on health systems? (8) Work from Home (WFH) and research.
|
|
Manufacturing and Sterilization for COVID-19 (MASC) at Penn State
A University-wide effort to address manufacturing/device needs in combating the coronavirus, led by Dr. Tim Simpson.
MASC initiative aims to leverage Penn State's research enterprise to innovate potential solutions to address the health care needs caused by COVID-19.
The group is growing rapidly and currently involves administrators, faculty, staff, and students at all levels across multiple colleges and multiple campuses. This includes the Penn State Hershey
College of Medicine
which is on the frontlines of fighting the virus. You can join the team via this link. There is an immediate need for additional analysis/design thinking around ventilator splitters. If you are
interested
, please respond to Dr. Tim Simpson (
[email protected]
) directly. Here is a video for the first MASC initiative: Face shields.
|
|
Institute for Computational and Data Science (ICDS) COVID-19 Research Computing Explore Grants
ICDS opens up a new COVID-19 seed grants program and computing resources for coronavirus research
ICDS is dedicated to supporting research into the novel coronavirus, and is opening up a new COVID-19 seed grant program, offering additional compute support to Penn State researchers actively addressing the challenges precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Resources provided through these Explore grants include:
Allocations on ICDS-ACI, and h
ours with RISE team members, who provide advanced compute support.
Researchers must
apply for the Explore grants here
. Refer to the link for more information.
|
|
External Funding opportunities for coronavirus research
|
2020 Spring CHOT IAB Meeting
|
|
|
CHOT Industrial Industry Advisory Board (IAB) Has Moved Online
Spring Conference Call on April 3 from 10:30 a.m. CST to 3:30 p.m. CST
Registration is required
The NSF CHOT 2020 Spring Industry Advisory Board (IAB) Meeting was to be hosted by the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 2-3, 2020. However, In response to the spread of COVID-19, the increasing travel restrictions and for the health and safety of all our members, faculty, and students, the CHOT Leadership Team has moved to cancel the in-person Spring IAB meeting. In its place, there will be a conference call on Friday, April 3 from 10:30 a.m. CST to 3:30 p.m. CST in order to discuss proposals and get through additional CHOT business. To get an invitation for the conference call, your registration is required. Click here to register.
|
|
As event guidance concerning the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, please note that these events may be rescheduled or moved to a virtual venue. Please check in with the specific event planners for the latest information
Webinar about Virtual Collaboration
March 31, 2020 from 12:00 P.M. to 1:00 P.M
Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute
presents "Making Virtual Collaborations Better" at its next Translational Science Series: Bench to Bedside and Beyond webinar from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. on March 31. The coronavirus pandemic is fundamentally changing the way many organizations operate for the foreseeable future. Remote work is a new reality. How can leaders create an excellent remote culture? What are the best practices for virtual meetings? Susan Mohammed, Ph.D., the institute's team science expert, discusses these topics during this webinar. Registration is required. Click here to register.
IISE Annual Conference 2020
May 30-June 2, 2020
New Orleans, Louisiana
The Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) will host the IISE Annual Conference & Expo in New Orleans, Louisiana. Leaders in the field will join up-and-comers and students to network, gather new ideas, and learn about innovative tools and techniques - resulting in lasting career connections. Click here for more information.
July 20-24, 2020
Montréal, Québec, Canada
The IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society will host the 42nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in conjunction with the 43rd Annual Conference of the Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Society on July 20-24 in Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Click here for more information.
IEEE CASE 2020
August 20-24, 2020, Hong Kong
The IEEE CASE is the flagship automation conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and constitutes the primary forum for cross-industry and multidisciplinary research in automation. Its goal is to provide a broad coverage and dissemination of fundamental research in automation among researchers, academics, and practitioners. The theme of the conference is
Automation Analytics.
Click here for more information.
|
Check out the new CHOT website for information about our new projects and exciting activities on the CHOT website.
|
|
