WEATHERHEAD SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

DEPARTMENT OF OPERATIONS

Improving Healthcare Responses to Bioterrorist Events

George Miller

Senior Analyst

The Altarum Institute

Ann Arbor, Michigan

george.miller@altarum.org

Thursday, March 25, 2004

11:15 – 12:30pm*

Peter B. Lewis Building, Room 121

For more information see: http://weatherhead.cwru.edu/orom/research/seminar.cfm

Abstract

The US General Accounting Office has noted “there is little or no excess capacity in the health care system for accepting and treating mass casualty patients”. Concern that communities’ medical infrastructures are inadequate to respond to a biological or chemical attack has led the Institute of Medicine to recommend development and use of computer-related tools to improve community medical response capabilities. This presentation will describe a research program to develop and apply such tools to help develop a better understanding of the resources and strategies needed for an effective community response to a bioterrorist attack. The presentation will describe the analysis tools, present illustrative results from their application, and suggest areas for future research.

Biographical Sketch

George Miller has served on the technical staff of The Altarum Institute and Vector Research, Incorporated (one of Altarum’s predecessor organizations) since 1972, and currently supports Altarum’s Health Solutions Division in the application of operations research methods to modeling and analysis of healthcare issues, including topics in disease management, telemedicine, graduate medical education, medical logistics, medical staffing, medical responses to bioterrorism, and reengineering of the healthcare delivery system. He received BSE, MSE, and PhD degrees in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, where he subsequently served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor. His work has been published in Health Care Management Science, Management Science, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Signal, and IIE Transactions. He has chaired numerous sessions at INFORMS national meetings, served on INFORMS’ Long-Range Planning Committee, and currently chairs its committee to select the recipient of the Seth Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Healthcare.

*Light refreshments will be served at 10:45am