Information Supply Chains

Threats of BioTerrorism add to the complexity of public health surveillance, creating a dynamic decision making environment intensified by the impact of missing information. Although traditional surveillance systems in public health are being upgraded to improve the likelihood of detecting and responding to a bioterrorism event, organizational processes are required to be robust to conditions of missing information. The on-going research on Healthcare Information Supply Chains aims to tackle this problem using analytical and qualitative approaches. In one research stream, structural and systems theories are being applied to describe complex relationships in decision processes and the information structures that influence decision outcomes. In another research stream, autonomic computing priniciples are utilized to develop intelligent simulation environments to understand resource allocation mechanisms in responding to public health disasters.

Key Personnel

Multi-Agent and Autonomic Approach

Hina Arora
Raghu Santanam
Ajay Vinze

Structural and Systems Theory

Orneita Burton
Minu Ipe
Ajay Vinze
Raghu Santanam

Presentations:

Upgrade on Grid Related Effort - February 2, 2006 - Ajay Vinze.

Publications:

Multi-Agent and Autonomic Approach

Arora, H., T.S. Raghu, Vinze, A., and Brittenham, P., "Using the Autonomic Computing Paradigm for Disease Outbreak Monitoring and Response," Third IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing, 2006.

Arora, H., Mishra, B. K., and T. S. Raghu, "Autonomic Computing Approach to Secure Knowledge Management: A Game-theoretic Analysis," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, (forthcoming) 2006.

Arora, H., T.S. Raghu, Vinze, A., and Brittenham, P., "Optimizing Surge Capacity during Disease Outbreaks: An Autonomic Resource Allocation Approach", (Technical Report), 2006

Arora, H., T.S. Raghu, Vinze, A., and Brittenham, P., "Enhancing Syndromic Surveillance through Autonomic Health Grids", Integrating the Digital Healthcare Enterprise, Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Omaha, Nebraska. 2005.

Mishra, B., and T.S. Raghu, "A Game-theoretic Approach to the Design of Self-Protection and Self-Healing Mechanisms in Autonomic Computing Systems," Proceedings of the Secure Knowledge Management Workshop, Buffalo, NY, 2004.

Structural and Systems Theory

Burton, O., Ipe, M., and Vinze, A.,"Organizational adaptations in national security: the impact of bioterrorism on surveillance processes and resources." Handbooks in Information Systems: National Security, (forthcoming) 2006.

Applegate, L., Vinze, A., and Ipe, M., "County Department of Public Health: Organizing for Emergency Preparedness and Response," Harvard Business School Case, Case # N9-806-089, 2006.

T. S. Raghu, and Vinze, A., “A Business Process Context for Knowledge Management.” Decision Support Systems, (forthcoming) 2006.