I was invited to be part of a grant project initiated by Dr. French of the Becker College Veterinary School and Dr. Julie Ellis of Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Ellis was researching grant opportunities to develop an improved wildlife agent’s field guide – currently a paper document that is taken out into the field as a critical resource of procedural and educational reference. The goal of our collaboration was for the early phase prototyping of an electronic version of this manual. For the first phase of the grant I produced a mock-up application with a limited feature set that would run in a mobile tablet environment as a proof of concept. I developed the design, wrote the application specification portion of the grant proposal, and then after we received the grant, I developed the alpha phase application — programming in Objective C within the Xcode environment for iOS. The grant allowed for a secondary programmer to be hired, so I was able to offer this eight week paid research opportunity to a Becker College game development major — Stephen Read. It was an excellent opportunity to work with another department at Becker as well as to collaborate with an outside academic institution.
The portion I authored for the grant proposal:
The current Foreign Animal Disease (FAD) Investigation Manual is an excellent field work resource for the National Center for Animal Health Emergency Management, consisting of a concisely written, step-by-step guide available in printed binder format for those in the field, as well as in the form of a PDF with accompanying instructional videos for use at a personal computer. While this resource is invaluable, the current advancements in personal mobile devices provide an excellent opportunity to reimagine the FAD manual to take advantage of new technology, offering a more efficient, effective, and robust experience for the investigator.
The role of the manual is to provide easy to use directions regarding FAD diagnostics and investigations, including topics such as personal protective equipment, necropsy, diagnostic sampling, shipping of diagnostic samples, various checklists, and the chain of command involved. The manual needs to be clear, practical, and its information must be easy to access, especially while in the field. It is also imperative that the manual be updated with new scientific information, policy guidelines, and contact information on a regular basis. While the content of the manual itself has proven very effective, not all the needs of a FAD investigator are being met, nor is the medium addressing all of the requirements at the levels possible with current technologies such as mobile application deployment.
This proposal is for a mobile tablet version of the FAD manual which would provide a centralized repository, not strictly limited by size, always current, and able to provide much faster and easier access to all of the information within the guide. It would also allow for growth and the inclusion of new features which could prove just as invaluable to the FAD investigator in the field. Interaction with the manual would be custom, based on the preferences of the user, and formated with quick searches, tap of the finger tabs, and voice command interaction to facilitate simple, fast, access to all data.
Review of the content of the manual suggests that certain areas would be instantly improved by moving to a mobile tablet application. The manual’s instructional sections on personal dressage as well as those for the swine, poultry, and bovine postmortem procedures rely heavily on a series of informative images, one for each step. By having said images on a device, the field worker would be able to focus on an individual step, in the precise order, without distraction or the possibility of losing his/her place. Each image could be of a much higher quality and would allow for the ability to zoom in to provide even greater detail. Further, each image could be augmented to provide additional information. For example the equipment being used, the specimen container required, and the agency or agencies who should receive such specimens could all be included with the image representing that particular step. The videos for these sections of the manual would also be of better service if they are accessible with the click of a button or a voice command along with the manual itself, in the field, rather than as a resource to be used on a separate device, off the field, after the collection for the investigation has already been concluded or prior to leaving for the field.
Finding information within the manual is currently aided by ensuring that it is concise and by providing paper tabs for each section. The mobile tablet application will provide similarly helpful tabs, but will also provide an interactive table of contents, allowing for an even deeper drill-down into the material for the precise information needed. Furthermore, by utilizing electronic bookmarks, investigators will quickly and easily be able to customize their manual to provide instant access to those areas most valuable to them. The application will also offer a targeted search feature which will permit the user to customize their search criteria with a quick and simple selection of source — FAD manual, personal field notes, extended database, or address book.
The address book is another example of a very clear area in which the manual will be greatly improved through the use of new media, i.e. a mobile application. Currently, there is a chapter in the printed manual containing the addresses, numbers, and positions of various contacts and agencies involved in the investigations. This information is critical, but requires quite a bit of time to look through, could easily become outdated, and involves a two step process of either dialing a number, entering an email address, or typing into label printing software — which is prone to human error. By designing the manual to take advantage of mobile development, the numbers could be dialed by a tap or voice command, an email sent with a touch, and all contact information could easily be copied and pasted lessening the chance for mistakes. Further, the ability to find any given piece of contact information will take only a fraction of the time by utilizing the features of instant search, user reorganized listings by first name, last name, agency, or position, and a quick cache of favorites.
This leads to another important advantage of the mobile application manual — the ability to keep the material relevant. Updates to the information in the manual are absolutely critical. Changes in procedure may relate to a new safety standard or indicate a recently discovered threat. Missed updates to contact information may create delays which could make an investigation obsolete, a specimen non-viable, or prolong the detection of a threat. With an electronic version of the manual accompanying a field worker, all content will be pushed to the device as needed. Every field investigator will pull from the same current list of mailing addresses, the most recent version of the donning and doffing guidelines, and the identical currently approved form for the VS Memorandum, etc.
It is also worth noting that the current paper manual offers a selection of useful resources for the investigator. However, accessing these resources either involves a multi-step process or forces the resources to be limited in scope if they are to be fully included within the physical manual. An extended, thoughtfully reviewed selection of resources honed for the needs of the investigator, is crucial, but having a resource list that is part of a living document provides numerous advantages. The mobile tablet application would allow for the resource information to be dynamically generated, thus always current, and would lead to live links, with the most up to date content. If a new resource becomes available, every investigator will have that new content when he/she accesses the application. Considering how often resources are updated, new ones become available, or links to such material is altered, having the ability to access a current, maintained, and global resource list, will offer a great advantage.
The mobile application format has one further critical advantage, yet to be discussed. It allows for the ability to adapt and improve upon the content of the manual, not just its delivery. While this is not in the scope of the first phase of reimagining the manual, the possibilities should be noted. Included are screen shots offering a look at a new feature set focusing on instant connectivity for the field investigator that would alter the role of the investigator from an individual working alone to provide data to a group of agencies in a unidirectional manner, to that of a member of a fully-informed collective participating in bi-directional conversation and elucidation. The application would use the manual as a basis for communicating vital information and as a user-created repository of data and living references and resources. A collective body of investigations would allow for fellow agents as well as overseeing bodies, to easily access information, instantly communicate updates and findings, and more efficiently recognize threats, lessen oversights and increase response time. A database of investigations would be searchable and accessible, securely, through the application. Further, as an investigation was in progress, relevant information based on location, animal type, agency, and threat level would augment the guidelines as the procedures were being performed.
For example, an investigator is on sight performing a postmortem of an avian specimen. The location is instantly reported via GPS, and a location based search is automatically performed on the reports database locating any outstanding declarations of outbreak, which are then posted on the homepage of the app. The investigator opens a report using the application and identifies the animal type [swine, sheep, bovine, fowl] which then triggers another automatic search for individual investigators’ reports for that animal type in the area. The search would return and note, those reports that had been confirmed by labs as well as those reports merely indicating unusual findings at this time.
The investigator then takes the interactive safety assessment [the option will be offered to bypass this assessment and to merely select a level instead — as a customized experience for those who feel they have enough experience in this area]. This will lead to an equipment list based on safety level, which the investigator can check off as he/she prepares. The appropriate Investigation Checklist will appear based on the organization chosen, allowing the investigator to initiate each stage and thus access any resources for a given stage that may be available via the manual.
Then the step-by-step guide for the postmortem of the identified animal will be presented as a voice controlled, full size, augmented series of images. As the investigator moves from one step/image to the next, using either a swipe or voice commands, he/she has the option to play a video for a particularly tricky area, zoom in to ensure correct identification, find out further information on a piece of equipment in the image, or when reading any ancillary text, lookup terms and define acronyms with a simple tap. The investigator is not only provided additional information, but also able to add to the report and the database, as well as their own personal searchable reference resource known as his/her Field Notes within the application. He/she can type in field notes, use speech to text to enter notes, or record a voice memo. Further, the investigator will add photos and short [restricted length for the sake of expedited transmission] videos to document suspected abnormalities. All of this supplemental documentation will be automatically tagged with the investigation case information, including ID, GPS location, time, date, leading agency, animal type, and even field agent if desired.
This information can then be shared with supervisors, agency databases, other individual investigators, or the secure universal database repository, using the address book, including favorites for quick access. The sharing of such material can be done in various forms, such as a full report upload to the secure database, or through individual email to agency contacts, individual instant messages to supervisors not in the field or deployed in another location during the postmortem, or even through Facetime or other video messaging interfaces allowing for remote investigators or supervisors to have a more immediate, responsive, interaction.
When the investigation checklist points toward labeling, the mailing of samples, and the completion of forms, the application will be able to auto-complete some of the fields, based on agency, date, time, investigator, and unique ID. The labels can be printed directly from the application, the correct forms will be identified so none are overlooked and can also be printed from the application if electronic submission is not enough. Eventually investigators could be provided with mobile printing capabilities so that labeled and properly addressed samples could be in transit even more quickly.
Whether currently active in an open investigation, or not, a field agent can search the secure database with advanced refinements meant to speed up response time and hone in on the most valuable results, such as searching based on location, threat type, symptom, animal type, and date range. The investigator will also be provided with various ways of assessing information — different infographics offer different advantages. For instance, the user can open up a map view that not only serves to provide directions and identify current location, but will also serve to indicate features about the area that might be relevant such as water bodies, population density, the nearest veterinary facility, even other field agents’ current locations, and markers for current outbreaks/threats. Further, investigators can receive push notification for important information such as a new, officially recognized outbreak/threat, or updates about their investigations such as a sample being received, a new investigation being assigned to them, or a request for more information. By creating a highly useful, interactive, single source for an investigator’s daily activities, other engaging, evolving possibilities emerge. Such opportunities for improvements will be addressed after phase one of the manual redesign.
In conclusion, the needs of the field investigator are demanding, and while the FAD manual is vital in addressing a number of these, a new mobile application format would drastically improve the most critical areas — those of increased productivity and immediate access to information in such an urgent environment. For phase one, separating material into logical sections, providing targeted search capabilities, offering custom bookmarks, favorites, and notes, and designing around a universal and always current backbone will result in a engaged, compelling, and powerful interactive manual.