Supporting regional pandemic management by enabling self-service reporting-A case report.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a need for better collaboration among research, care, and management in Germany as well as globally. Initially, there was a high demand for broad data collection across Germany, but as the pandemic evolved, localized data became increasingly necessary. Customized dashboards and tools were rapidly developed to provide timely and accurate information. In Saxony, the DISPENSE project was created to predict short-term hospital bed capacity demands, and while it was successful, continuous adjustments and the initial monolithic system architecture of the application made it difficult to customize and scale.
Methods: To analyze the current state of the DISPENSE tool, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the data processing steps and identified data flows underlying users' metrics and dashboards. We also conducted a workshop to understand the different views and constraints of specific user groups, and brought together and clustered the information according to content-related service areas to determine functionality-related service groups. Based on this analysis, we developed a concept for the system architecture, modularized the main services by assigning specialized applications and integrated them into the existing system, allowing for self-service reporting and evaluation of the expert groups' needs.
Results: We analyzed the applications' dataflow and identified specific user groups. The functionalities of the monolithic application were divided into specific service groups for data processing, data storage, predictions, content visualization, and user management. After composition and implementation, we evaluated the new system architecture against the initial requirements by enabling self-service reporting to the users.
Discussion: By modularizing the monolithic application and creating a more flexible system, the challenges of rapidly changing requirements, growing need for information, and high administrative efforts were addressed.
Conclusion: We demonstrated an improved adaptation towards the needs of various user groups, increased efficiency, and reduced burden on administrators, while also enabling self-service functionalities and specialization of single applications on individual service groups.
Competing Interests: Outside the scope of this study, Jochen Schmitt has received consultation fees from Novartis, Lilly, and Sanofi, and his institution has been granted funding for investigator-initiated research from Novartis, Sanofi, Pfizer, and ALK. Michael Albrecht holds the position of CEO at the University Hospitals Carl Gustav Carus Dresden. We wish to clarify that these affiliations do not influence our commitment to PLOS ONE’s policies on data and material sharing. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
(Copyright: © 2024 Gebler et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)