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Operation Scarlet Harvest Since that time TDS has conducted a pilot program involving 300 emergency workers from all levels of government, representing all Region-13/Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Counties in an exercise titled: “Scarlet Harvest.” Piloted was a new method of assigning user actions more quickly. This exercise also extended TDS’ functionality beyond that successfully used in “Operation Wright Plan” exercise by adding software capabilities that managed “point of distribution” (POD) activities for the dispensing of medications to ERs, ER families and the general population. Operation Scarlet Harvest was a well scripted series of exercises, two years in the making that choreographed animals dying, county fair-goers getting sick and small-town hospitals getting inundated with patients. Planned were for County and surrounding County emergency workers to converge into New Castle and Hickory in response, to contain the choreographed environmental crisis. The multiphase exercise is part of periodic training for the region's emergency service departments, with a first-time focus on a biological event. Through a series of acts, with titles including "The Discovery", "The Fallout", and "The War Room" federal, state, municipal and county agencies get first-hand practice at coordinating a regional response to a potential catastrophe. Day 1 – Lawrence County Fairgrounds The exercise began with some unexplained animal deaths and then more issues with county fair-goers at the Lawrence County Fairgrounds in Hickory. With EMITS™ being used by our ER volunteers working in conjunction with the police to assure that only credentialed personnel were allowed, the area was secured as the incidents parameters were established. EMITS™ residing on a rugged, mobile Motorola handheld made it possible for ER teams and equipment to arrive on the scene and to be checked in within seconds. Each EMITS™ volunteer armed with these handhelds were able to easily reach arriving team members by climbing onto vehicles as they arrived and quickly scanning id badges and validating personnel. As opposed to during Operation Wright, the EMITS™ volunteer now also carried a clipboard of easily identifiable and easily scanned action barcodes (e.g. check in event, check out event, check in staging area, check out staging area). After an id badge is scanned a second scan of the action barcode completes the transaction. This can be compared to what was done during the Wright Operation where the action code was chosen from the handhelds GUI, where an EMITS™ prompt screen was displayed. The new action card method reduced overall process time by 80%. Throughout the exercise ER staff were easily checked in and out of the events various zones and were continually tracked in real-time throughout the exercise. Day 2 – James South Point of Distribution (POD) On day two of the operation, EMITS™ was slated to record all individuals that were cleared entry into New Haven’s James South Hospital. Due to the mock public health outbreak, head of households were reporting to the hospital to receive doses of ciprofloxacin and amoxicillin. Also a new hybrid POD procedure needed to be tried for the first time, the dispersal of these drugs to representatives of local police and fire departments for further dispersal to the public from police and fire stations. All Emergency Medical personnel were quickly checked into the event with auxiliary medical volunteers’ names and roles being quickly recorded by EMITS™ volunteers via handheld data entry. As drugs were being dispensed it only took several scans from the EMITS™ handheld to record who was receiving the drugs and in what quantity, thus performing in seconds a process that usually takes many minutes to perform. The below example is part of the accountability report that was produced as the result of the day’s activities. Head of the household last names have been sanitized to protect privacy. James South POD Drug Distribution Summary:
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