Success Story: Launch of the vaccination centre

NCC presenting the success story

The Czech National Competence Centre (NCC) for High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Data Analysis (HPDA) is represented by IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava. Its mission is to analyse, implement, and coordinate all necessary activities and offer end users its services to meet their needs: from access to supercomputers and technology consulting to providing training for industry, public administration, and academia.

Technical/scientific Challenge:

IT4Innovations was invited to participate in the project to build a large-scale vaccination centre in Ostrava. The centre at Černá louka became operational in March 2021. During the planning of the vaccination centre, many different aspects had to be considered, such as personnel, space organisation, number of other stations, etc. The main point was to maximise the number of vaccinated people in one day while keeping the minimum critical issues and employees. IT4Innovations was asked to find an optimal configuration of individual stages to maximise the efficiency of the vaccination centre.

Industrial Organisations Involved:

The University Hospital Ostrava is a leading healthcare provider in the Czech Republic. It offers specialised medical care in the Moravian-Silesian Region. In cooperation with the Medical Faculty of Ostrava University, it educates young doctors and other healthcare professionals.

The Regional Authority of the Moravian-Silesian Region is one of the regional bodies. It is a regional administrative government and, at the same time, part of the State Administration of the Czech Republic. It has 18 departments and one independent division. The Regional Authority of the Moravian-Silesian Region is located in Ostrava.

The metropolis of the Moravian-Silesian region is the 2nd largest city in the Czech Republic and has the third-largest population. The statutory city of Ostrava is implementing a range of projects, creating an energised town that offers a high quality of life for all generations and attracts talented people to live and work here.

The Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ostrava is the youngest medical faculty in the Czech Republic. The Faculty ranks among Central Europe’s most modern teaching and research centres for medical and non-medical fields. Currently, the faculty has around 1700 students in 27 degree programmes, with over 400 students graduating every year.

Solution:

To find the optimal solution which can be easily presented to an audience of all technical levels, we created a simulation of the people flow through the vaccination centre. In this simulation, the centre is modelled as a directed graph through which people must pass. Such representation was chosen because it is easily modified at any simulation step. It can create different scenarios, such as people going for lunch, a blackout, or failure at a given station. The developed simulation made it possible to determine the required number of operators and staff positions for each station. The simulation shows how many people can be in the vaccination centre at a particular time, at different stages such as registration, vaccination itself, or the waiting room after immunisation.

You can try to create a simulation and run it here.

Benefits:

• Vaccination, according to a simulation prepared by scientists at IT4Innovations, can be administered to up to 2,600 people per day.
• The simulation helps to organise the centre’s operation and minimise the number of staff.
• The simulation significantly helped with the centre’s testing and saved a considerable amount of time.

Business impact:

IT4Innovations was invited to participate in the project to build a large-scale vaccination centre in Ostrava. Other partners in this unique and urgent project included the Moravian-Silesian Region, the Statutory City of Ostrava, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ostrava, and the University Hospital Ostrava.

The team led by Tomáš Martinovič from IT4Innovations created a simulation of the passage through the vaccination centre, making it possible to detect critical points. In the original design, these were the waiting room after vaccination and the printing of the confirmation at the exit. Even “little things” such as lunch breaks for staff were considered. To minimise the number of staff, rotations of support staff during holidays were prepared, with individuals taking turns at each post.

The supporting simulation the scientists at IT4Innovations developed was a significant element in designing a large-scale vaccination centre. The centre’s capacity testing would have taken much longer without the simulation. Based on the simulation, it was found that the centre can vaccinate up to 2,600 people a day.