The WHO Adaptt Surge Planning Support Tool is an experimental, open-source, Excel-based graphical tool designed for policy-makers and senior planners within WHO Member States to estimate inpatient care surge capacity during public health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Developed by the Associação Portuguesa de Administradores Hospitalares and Glintt, and released as open-source software at the request of the World Health Organization (WHO), the tool simulates various parameters to provide critical planning information.
Its primary value proposition is visualizing acute and intensive care capacity needs over time, identifying the timing and severity of the peak of an outbreak, and enabling detailed planning of human resources for health systems.
Key Capabilities:
- Bed Requirement Forecasting: Estimates the total number of beds required, broken down by severity (moderate, severe, critical, including needs for renal replacement therapy and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation).
- Shortage Prediction: Identifies the predicted dates of bed shortages.
- Human Resources Planning: Calculates the detailed human resources (health workforce) needed, using ILO International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) codes.
- Data Flexibility: Allows users to input local epidemiological data, vary mitigation scenarios (e.g., physical distancing measures), and tailor the tool to account for specific attack rates, hospital activities, and existing capacity.
- Graphical Output: The main tab (
Surge_Predicted_Impact) provides a graphical output of predictions and predicted days of shortage. - Model Selection: Users can select an embedded illustrative epidemiological model or input their own custom model data.
The tool is complementary to other WHO surge calculators, such as the Health Workforce Estimator (HWFE) and the Essential Supplies Forecasting Tool (ESFT). It is designed to work specifically in MS Excel Office 365.