Sean Horgan

Projects

Cosanta

Sean Horgan

Cosanta is the name of a passion project of mine where I spend time helping organizations in the non-profit/public sector. I meet people with interesting problems, learn more about their needs, propose some ideas, and co-develop solutions that enable them to have a bigger impact on the people they serve.

FastTrack

I developed FastTrack which was a mobile-optimized web application that automates data collection, processing, and report generation to remotely monitor vaccine distribution data in near real-time across multiple devices.

The idea for FastTrack came about during the H1N1 response in 2009-2010. I had just moved from Massachusetts to California and volunteered my data analysis and software engineering skills to Sacramento County Department of Public Health as they vaccinated over 40,000 people over the course of 35 clinics. I saw many parallels between how these clinics processed patients and computer servers processed data. However, these clinics did not have the monitoring capabilities to easily track important metrics in real-time.

Here’s an example of the type of hardcopy material that clinics collected to track vaccine distribution:

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After 3000+ people showed up at the first H1N1 clinic, I used a simple mechanical counter to experiment with different methods to collect the right data. County staff and other volunteers recorded patient total every 5 minutes, giving the clinic managers real-time client throughput and allowing them to better manage the expectations of the patients, public, and the media.

Recognizing the need to provide clinic staff with accurate real-time data, I designed and built FastTrack using the following technologies:

J2EE application with Google App Engine, a precursor to Google Cloud

JDO/BigTable, jQuery & jQMobile, iWebKit, OpenLayers

Google Data Protocol, Docs API, Visualization toolkit

Here’s a high-level overview:

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Here’s a screenshot of a dashboard used by a clinical site director on their iPad:

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I was able to generate visualizations that enabled public health department staff to look at vaccine uptake by zipcode:

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Conferences

I presented the project at a few regional and national conferences:

Western Regional Epidemiology Network Conference, May 2011

CDC Strategic National Stockpile Summit: Strengthening the Response Through Collaboration and Innovation, July 2011

National Association of County & City Health Officials Conference, March 2012

Western Regional Epidemiology Network Conference, May 2011

Abstract: Tracking your POD? There's an app for that!

Presented by Susana Tat, CDC Public Health Associate

Local Health Departments are required to track and report various metrics associated with emergency preparedness response activities, such as mass vaccination and prophylaxis, to grantors, the media, and the public. Traditional data collection is often cumbersome and costly, involving reams of paper and staff time to collect, enter, and analyze data. Moreover, delayed processing and release of public health data in today's day and age fails to meet expectations of community members, decision makers, and news media increasingly accustomed to accessing real-time information easily through social media, especially during a public health emergency.

In 2010, during the seasonal influenza season, the Yolo County Health Department Emergency Preparedness Unit worked with Cosanta, LLC to test a web-based application, now called FastTrack," at a Point of Dispensing (POD) site. This app is optimized for portable devices, such as laptops, iPads, iPhones, Blackberries, and Androids, to facilitate on-site data collection and real-time monitoring of vaccine distribution, demographics, and other metrics. During the POD exercise, volunteers received Just-In-Time training and used their personal smart phones to track seven vaccine lot numbers and patient flow. The FastTrack app was also adapted and utilized at a Tdap clinic in San Francisco to track patient demographics, such as age, gender, grade level, and zip code, allowing real-time utilization mapping. The FastTrack app can be adapted to other events with potential for rapid data collection in various public health settings, such as clinics, shelters, and in post-exposure assessments.

In this presentation, the presenter will: 1) discuss our use and evaluation of this app; 2) explore other potential public health uses of this app; and, 3) demo this app.

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CDC Strategic National Stockpile Summit, July 2011

Strengthening the Response Through Collaboration and Innovation

Abstract title: Real-time tracking of POD metrics using iPhones, iPads, and Android devices

Presenter: Sean Horgan, Cosanta

Co-presenters: Dana Carey & Hannah Aalborg, Yolo County Health Department

Cosanta FastTrack is a web-based application optimized for mobile/portable devices that allows public-health organizations to monitor in real-time how their clinics or Points Of Dispensing (PODs) are operating. Through the use of existing assets like laptops or easily available devices like the iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android, clinic staff can rapidly collect data such as vaccination distribution and/or patient demographics. This data is immediately processed and stored on the internet, where operational statistics are generated and made available to decision makers.

FastTrack was developed by Sean Horgan in partnership with Dana Carey and Hannah Aalborg from the Yolo County Health Department. A live POD trial was conducted during a combined Flu/Tdap clinic in November 2010, where 1435 vaccines were administered in a 4 hour period. Two volunteers, who had no prior training, used FastTrack with their personal iPhones to record in real-time vaccine distribution with an error rate of 0.3%. Sean Horgan also collaborated with Amy Pine and Erin Bachus from San Francisco Department of Public Health to design a trial of FastTrack during Tdap vaccination clinics that focused on the real-time collection of client demographic data. The first of three trials was conducted using 2 volunteers with in-house laptops in March 2011 and collected 7 non-identifiable demographic elements.

During this presentation, we will review the design process for FastTrack, lessons learned during the live trials, and how mobile devices can be used in PODs and emergencies.

Breakout session learning objectives, participants will be able to

leverage common mobile devices to track in real-time what is going on inside their clinics and PODs

discuss software requirements for applications that work on iPhones, iPads, Androids, Blackberry, and PCs

identify strategies to remotely manage distribution of vaccine in emergencies

understand how cloud-based systems can reduce in-house computing needs

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National Association of County & City Health Officials Conference, March 2012

Managing the Med Surge: Lessons from low-cost real-time instrumentation of clinic and POD operations using cheap mobile devices and on-demand cloud services.

Session Description

Events like the earthquake in Haiti and tsunami in Japan highlight how critical it is for local health departments to effectively manage the surge in requests for their services and medicine using all available resources. Yolo County and San Francisco County California have run trials of a system called FastTrack that uses a mix of department and volunteer mobile devices along with on-demand Internet services to instrument their seasonal flu and Tdap clinics, allowing them to know exactly what is happening inside their clinics as it happens.

The session will focus on a review of lessons learned from live trials, brainstorm more low-cost ways to use volunteer-supplied mobile devices to reduce health department costs, and discuss techniques to connect clinic operations to services on the Internet.

FastTrack was developed by Sean Horgan, who volunteered at 35 clinics during the H1N1 response in 2009-2010 and saw that a simple and cost-effective system was needed that would allow clinic managers to track statistics like medicine counts, client demographics, and client wait-time. He designed and built a prototype that Yolo County successfully trailed in November 2010. San Francisco County trialed subsequent versions for their 3 Tdap vaccinations in March, May, and August 2011.

FastTrack is a web-based application optimized for mobile/portable devices that leverages existing assets like laptops or easily available devices like the iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android. No application needs to be installed or maintained on the device; clinic staff or volunteers log in using a mobile web browser and begin counting anything that needs to be monitored. This data is immediately processed and stored on the Internet, where operational statistics are generated and made available to decision makers. Staff can configure alerts so specific statistics are sent to social media channels such as private or public twitter feeds.

Summit Program Description

Yolo County and San Francisco County California have run trials of FastTrack, a system that uses a mix of department/volunteer mobile devices along with on-demand Internet services to instrument their clinics. Staff can monitor medicine counts as well as broadcast client wait-time to social media channels like twitter.

Learning Objectives

During this presentation, we will review the design process for FastTrack, lessons learned during the live trials, and how mobile devices can be used in PODs and emergencies.

Breakout session learning objectives, participants will be able to

leverage common mobile devices to track in real-time clinic and POD statistics such as medicine count by lot number, client demographics, and client wait-time

identify strategies to remotely manage distribution of vaccine in emergencies and how to connect POD operations in real-time to communication platforms like twitter

understand how cheap, volunteer-provided mobile devices and on-demand cloud-based systems can reduce health department computing costs discuss design goals for applications that work on iPhones, iPads, Androids, Blackberry, and PCs

Poster

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FastTrack

Conferences

Western Regional Epidemiology Network Conference, May 2011

CDC Strategic National Stockpile Summit, July 2011

National Association of County & City Health Officials Conference, March 2012

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