Covid
Managing COVID vaccine distribution in West Virginia | RStudio
With a little help from open source software
Learn more: Data Driven West Virginia: https://business.wvu.edu/research-outreach/data-driven-wv
DDWV PPE forecasting: https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2020/04/27/wvu-business-experts-partner-with-the-national-guard-to-forecast-ppe-needs
DDWV inventory management system: https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2021/03/22/a-different-kind-of-science-wvu-chambers-college-data-scientists-propel-west-virginia-s-acclaimed-vaccine-strategy-with-digital-inventory-management-system
West Virginia National Guard: https://www.wv.ng.mil/
Shiny: https://shiny.rstudio.com/
West Virginia leading nation at start of vaccine rollout: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2021/3/4/22313540/covid-19-vaccine-west-virginia
In the United States, approximately 2.5 million doses of COVID vaccines are being delivered each day, and how these doses go from the manufacturer to a shot in someone’s arm varies by state, often with mixed results.
But early on in the vaccine distribution process, one state led the pack in terms of using the majority of vaccine doses it had been allotted. That state? West Virginia.
Part of what has made West Virginia successful is the creation of an inventory management system using Shiny, an open source framework for building interactive web applications. The system was built by Data Driven West Virginia, part of the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University, in collaboration with the West Virginia Army National Guard.
Using Shiny has provided visibility into each component of the vaccine supply chain, leading to the creation of distribution plans that are able to quickly and efficiently match supply with demand, getting vaccines to the right people in the right location at the right time.
RStudio’s mission is to create free and open-source software for data science, scientific research, and technical communication to enhance the production and consumption of knowledge by everyone, regardless of economic means, and to facilitate collaboration and reproducible research, both of which are critical to the integrity and efficacy of work across industries.
RStudio also produces RStudio Team, a modular platform of commercial software products that give organizations the confidence to adopt R, Python and other open-source data science software at scale, along with online services to make it easier to learn and use them over the web.
Together, RStudio’s open-source software and commercial software form a virtuous cycle: the adoption of open-source data science software at scale in organizations creates demand for RStudio’s commercial software; and the revenue from commercial software, in turn, enables deeper investment in the open-source software that benefits everyone. Check out www.rstudio.com
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Katherine Kopp | COVID vaccine distribution Shiny app walkthrough (mock data) | RStudio
Learn more:
Data Driven West Virginia: https://business.wvu.edu/research-outreach/data-driven-wv
DDWV PPE forecasting: https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2020/04/27/wvu-business-experts-partner-with-the-national-guard-to-forecast-ppe-needs
DDWV inventory management system: https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2021/03/22/a-different-kind-of-science-wvu-chambers-college-data-scientists-propel-west-virginia-s-acclaimed-vaccine-strategy-with-digital-inventory-management-system
West Virginia National Guard: https://www.wv.ng.mil/
Shiny: https://shiny.rstudio.com/
West Virginia leading nation at start of vaccine rollout: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2021/3/4/22313540/covid-19-vaccine-west-virginia
To understand just how hard it is to get vaccines to the population, it helps to understand where it can go wrong. This starts with how vaccines are packed into containers.
To fill up a container, Pfizer places 195 vials into a tray, and up to 5 trays into a single container. Moderna puts 10 vials into a small box, and then combines a minimum of 10 small boxes into a single container. In most states Pfizer and Moderna ship directly to the organization that will be administering the vaccine to the population. This could be a hospital, a pharmacy, or any place where trained professionals will be putting shots into arms.
But what happens when a pharmacy receives a full container from Pfizer, 975 vials, but only needs 600?
West Virginia has removed this complication by shipping directly to five hubs strategically located throughout the state. Within each of these hubs, containers of vaccine vials are broken down into smaller components and then either picked up or shipped directly to the hospital, pharmacy, or organization that will be administering the vaccine.
These hubs are managed by the Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF), a team of teams composed of public, private, and governmental organizations as well as the National Guard. The Joint Interagency Task Force is responsible for drawing up a weekly distribution plan for each hub, in alignment with CDC allocations, and matching vaccine supply with demand.
By using a statewide system managed by a central organization, there’s a level of agility and fluidity that allows each hub to adjust to a variety of changes in order to maximize the number of vaccines that are being administered to the population each week.
RStudio’s mission is to create free and open-source software for data science, scientific research, and technical communication to enhance the production and consumption of knowledge by everyone, regardless of economic means, and to facilitate collaboration and reproducible research, both of which are critical to the integrity and efficacy of work across industries.
RStudio also produces RStudio Team, a modular platform of commercial software products that give organizations the confidence to adopt R, Python and other open-source data science software at scale, along with online services to make it easier to learn and use them over the web.
Together, RStudio’s open-source software and commercial software form a virtuous cycle: the adoption of open-source data science software at scale in organizations creates demand for RStudio’s commercial software; and the revenue from commercial software, in turn, enables deeper investment in the open-source software that benefits everyone. Check out www.rstudio.com .
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rstudio
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rstudiopbc/
And LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rstudio-pbc/
Matt Thomas & Mike Page | How the Tidyverse helped the British Red Cross respond to COVID | RStudio
Full title: Cognitive speed: How the Tidyverse helped the British Red Cross respond quickly to COVID-19
We will discuss the importance of cognitive speed, defined here as the rate in which an idea can be translated into code, and why the Tidyverse excels in this domain. We will demonstrate this idea in relation to a suite of tools we were required to rapidly develop at the British Red Cross in order to respond effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic. To do this, we will exhibit how elements of the unifying design principles outlined in the ‘tidyverse design guide - Tidyverse team’ relate to the notion of cognitive speed, giving specific examples for various design considerations. We believe this talk will encourage reflection on better design practices for future R developers, using the design principles of the tidyverse as the guiding beacon.
About Matt: Dr. Matt Thomas is Head of Strategic Insight and Foresight at the British Red Cross. Matt’s team aims to help the Red Cross become more anticipatory and proactive by producing insights and tools including the Vulnerability Index (https://britishredcrosssociety.github.io/covid-19-vulnerability/ ) and Resilience Index (https://britishredcross.shinyapps.io/resilience-index/) . He holds a PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology and, prior to joining the British Red Cross, was researching topics including reindeer herders in the Arctic, hunter-gatherers in the Philippines, and witches in China. Outside of work, Matt writes a column for an anthropology magazine (https://www.sapiens.org/column/machinations/ ) as well as fiction.
About Mike: Mike Page is a data scientist on the Strategic Insight and Foresight team at the British Red Cross. Here, he helps to develop a suite of open source tools and dashboards including the Vulnerability Index (https://britishredcrosssociety.github.io/covid-19-vulnerability/ ) and Resilience Index (https://britishredcross.shinyapps.io/resilience-index/) . Mike is also the author of several R packages including mortyr and newsrivr. In his spare time you can find him rock climbing around the Alps
