SBIR-STTR Award

PandemicWorld (PW) will be designed as a tool to aid hospital and other medical treatment facilities staffs in managing the influx of a large number of patients that would result from an unexpected major outbreak of some form of contagious disease. PW will be designed as an analysis tool and real-time strategy game like simulation focused on hospital/medical treatment facility (MTF) resource management (traffic, triage, treatment management). Its objective is to allow hospital/MTF personnel to develop plans for how they will manage the influx of patients (pandemic victims or people with everyday needs such as accident victims, labor and delivery patients, etc.), space, medical supplies, treatment personnel, services, and so forth from the moment potentially infected people begin arriving through the time of their release. PW will provide the necessary scenario development tools to create an initial plan of action, analyze the plan to “harden” it, and to train on the plan. PW will be based upon the simulation builder’s toolkit created under DARPA’s RealWorld program. More important is that Total Immersion Software intends to use technology and program management techniques it has evolved out of the commercial computer game community, modified to meet the needs of the Federal Government.

Keywords:
Pandemic, Influenza, Disaster Management, Disaster Planning, Multiplayer Games, Real-Time Strategy Game, Medical Simulation, Medical Skills Training

PandemicWorld is being developed by Total Immersion Software as an aid to hospital and other medical treatment facilities in planning for and managing a medical catastrophe. PandemicWorld’s purpose is to allow hospital/MTF personnel to develop and evaluate operational plans for resource management (personnel, traffic, triage, treatment management) in their own unique treatment facility across a variety of operating conditions. Conditions include controlling the rate and mixing the influx of patients (i.e., pandemic flu victims or people with everyday needs such as accident victims, women going into labor, etc.), the availability of health care workers, and the availability of resources. PandemicWorld provides a hospital staff the tools to simulate events using their existing operating plans, but allows them to test those operation plans in the extreme circumstances they might face in the event of a medical disaster such as pandemic flu outbreak.

Keywords:
Hospital, Medical Treatment Facility, Pandemic Flu, Disaster, Planning, Influenza, Hospital Design, Simulation