When you want to change an outcome, sometimes changing the model for approaching the issue can be just what, uh, the doctor ordered. At the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, researchers are considering how to make flu shots more effective. One of them, Mark Roberts, now is an assistant professor of engineering at Buffalo’s neighbor to the North, the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
The research focused on using engineering strategies to strengthen the decision-making—a yearly event—about what to include in the shots, not for future years, but for the year in which the decision was being made. According to Science Daily online, one factor in decision-making in this matter affects the others.
For instance, it is not certain which strains should be included, and the longer that decision is put off, the more knowledge is available. But the flu season starts even if that knowledge isn’t timely, and waiting longer means that running out of vaccine is more likely. Why? Because not enough will have been produced by then.
The Pitt model takes into consideration the timing of decisions as well as the content. The FDA meets to look at, for instance, information about flu strains elsewhere on the globe. What makes this collaboration about flu shots interesting is that it includes a human factor.
"We're suggesting a policy that includes more frequent committee meetings," another researcher, Oleg Prokopyev, an assistant professor at Pitt, was quoted as saying. "That could provide additional gains in the annual societal benefit of the flu shot."
Their work was published in the September-October issue of Operations Research.
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