A Disease Outbreak Monitor Example
User: The chief veterinarian for a very large animal shelter.
Monitoring Task: The vet must monitor for infectious disease outbreak. Some diseases, like kennel cough, can run through a closely quartered animal population like the one at his shelter, but he also can't react to each and every case; he has many other responsibilities. The application that was created for him was intended to help him identify times when it would be most valuable for him to investigate if an outbreak was imminent. The problem is compunded by three factors:
Situation Description: Animal diagnoses and room occupancies are stored in a database. An outbreak is characterized by several connected animals developing the disease in short period of time. Animals are connected through the rooms they've occupied. As a result, the heed of the situation is defined by the days since an animal in a room was infected. Once three or four animals have been infected in the same room during a disease incubation window, it becomes important for the vet to investigate.
Monitoring Task: The vet must monitor for infectious disease outbreak. Some diseases, like kennel cough, can run through a closely quartered animal population like the one at his shelter, but he also can't react to each and every case; he has many other responsibilities. The application that was created for him was intended to help him identify times when it would be most valuable for him to investigate if an outbreak was imminent. The problem is compunded by three factors:
- many diseases have asymptomatic but contagious periods of several days
- the animals are moved frequently from room to room
- many different people interact with the animals, from vets, to staff, to volunteers, so no one has a complete picture of the state of any animal.
Situation Description: Animal diagnoses and room occupancies are stored in a database. An outbreak is characterized by several connected animals developing the disease in short period of time. Animals are connected through the rooms they've occupied. As a result, the heed of the situation is defined by the days since an animal in a room was infected. Once three or four animals have been infected in the same room during a disease incubation window, it becomes important for the vet to investigate.
Outcome: The vet identified that the information in the display could serve as a preventative measure. If each animal room had its associated heed posted at each door, then the volunteers would treat the heed value as a danger value, and might be more vigilant and cautious in those rooms, thereby reducing the risk of spreading the disease.
