Base Operations

Base Operations is committed to solving the problem involving a lack of data systems that can be used to monitor disease outbreaks and intervention efficacy across communities and aid in public health decision-making.

We propose using our spatiotemporal data platform to monitor disease outbreaks, conduct scientific experiments to evaluate intervention effectiveness, monitor intervention implementation within communities, and inform decision-making.

Our solution would positively change lives by:

• providing a globally scalable geospatial data platform for monitoring the real-time spread of disease across communities
• allowing the evaluation of intervention effectiveness within communities 
• nudging uptake of interventions by clearly communicating changes in disease spread as a result of intervention implementation
• monitoring deployment of response resources across communities and neighborhoods to ensure an equitable response for those most at risk.

We are working to solve the problem of inefficient disease surveillance, intervention evaluation and adoption, and information transparency that existed during the COVID-19 Pandemic and ultimately hindered the most effective and equitable responses from taking place.

In an ideal state, communities are able to rapidly

• Surveil and Analyze disease outbreaks
• Hypothesize where targeted interventions should be implemented and resources focussed to curb further spread
• Test the effectiveness of interventions over both geographic space and time to ensure they have the desired effect
•  Adopt interventions that are proven to work. This includes nudging adoption at the community public policy and individual compliance levels by communicating:
  • impact of the disease on the community in a relatable way
  •  the upside of intervention adoption through test results or comparison with other communities who have already implemented and have high compliance with the interventions in question 
  • the predicted downside of not intervening
• Surveil and Analyze spread, intervention uptake, and resource deployment to ensure equity and effectiveness across the community, including those most at risk
• Adjusting continuously following the preceding steps: Surveil & Analyze, Hypothesize Improvement, Test (or look at others who have), Adopt, Repeat

The Solution:

Our solution is to provide a spatiotemporal (space and time) data platform for:

• monitoring disease outbreaks over geographic space and time
• evaluating the effectiveness of interventions by looking at how outbreak trends change overtime in geographies where the interventions are tested and adopted
• nudging both policymakers and individuals to adopt interventions by:
  •  allowing comparison between communities that have and have not adopted the interventions
  • telling the story of the outbreak's toll and personalizing the impact when feasible

In essence, our solution is a data platform that allows users to combat disease outbreak using the scientific method:

• Using platform, observe the outbreak
• Research and hypothesize how to more effectively respond
• Test intervention
• Using platform, evaluate efficacy of intervetioin
• Using platform, report and share conclusions
• Repeat.

How it works:

Community data is mapped spatially and temporally, allowing for users to quickly visualize the outbreak and formulate response strategies

Interventions, environmental factors, and other variables are logged for both geographic spaces and time periods.

Machine learning and statistical regression techniques are used to estimate relationships between variables (interventions etc) and outbreak, providing data-driven evidence of what's working.

Users can view (and compare) results, which nudges adoption of the best practices.

Our solution serves the policymakers, experts, and all community members who all need to work together to ensure the most holistic and effective strategies are taken to reduce the toll of disease outbreaks.  We aim to provide a platform that increases transparency and understanding, enables problem-solving and decision-making, and easily communicates both the impacts of disease and what interventions are most effective in stopping a disease's spread.  

Currently, these stakeholders are underserved in that they do not possess the tools for systematically and scientifically responding to a disease outbreak in their community.  They also don't have tools for clearly communicating why interventions should be followed by showing the impacts (and predictions) of what happens when interventions are or are not adopted. This lack of evidence also hinders sharing and adoption of best practices across communities.

Base Operations has had interaction with members of our targeted audience. Base Operations conducted 6+ hours of discussions with the Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, part of the CDC Foundation, in an attempt to deepen our knowledge of the issue set. The Executive Director explained the challenge of deploying vaccines and measuring interventions and proposed engaging Base Operations as a partner in resolving this issue. 

If selected, the Base Operations team will interact with public health organizations and local communities to understand how the solution can best meet their needs.

The problem we are addressing, our proposed solution, and the population we are serving are directly aligned to increasing community preparedness and response to the next pandemic.  Policymakers, experts, and community members (our target user audience) will use our solution (the Base Operations platform) to better monitor and respond to the next pandemic in a data-driven way, reducing its spread (the problem) across the entire population (our target beneficiary audience).  

We selected Pilot because Base Operations is a young company providing an analogous solution for paying customers in the corporate security world.  

We have visualized COVID-19 on our existing platform as a proof of concept, which was written shown in a Forbes article (link below).  You can see the magnitude of disease spread as well as which states had ongoing stay-at-home orders (an intervention).

Article Link

The Base Operations solution is catalytic in that it will allow stakeholders to make better decisions when dealing with public health crises through the application of artificial intelligence, spatiotemporal segmentation, and visualization techniques.  This is because stakeholders can better monitor the situation and apply the scientific method towards response and reducing impact.

Because this solution allows for the widescale evaluation of intervention efficacy, we expect it to enable broader positive impacts from others in the space.  Solutions can be tested over geographies and time to scientifically conclude their efficacy with data. This data substantiates the adoption of the most effective interventions. 

Finally, when outbreak and intervention data is clearly mapped on our platform, any inequities with response become readily transparent.  In this way, our solution is also innovative in its ability to promote inclusion and equity during the next health crisis.

Our analogous security solution currently serves three paying customers with many more in the acquisition pipeline.  This proposed solution does not currently serve any people.

Within one year, we estimate that we can scale our solution to serve most communities that are already connected via a modern information technology infrastructure.  The work to integrate these communities entails defining the standardized data formats and setting up the appropriate data transfer mechanisms. Assuming major Urban areas in the US would willingly participate on day one, we could serve anywhere from 100 to 200 million people within the US alone.

Within 5 years we are confident that our solution can serve any community that sets up the infrastructure necessary for collecting and transmitting community data.  In other words, this solution could potentially serve the entire global population.

We will measure our progress towards our impact goals through the following indicators:

• The total population being served as derived from the communities integrated into our solution.
• Customer satisfaction and net promoter score from critical users, such as experts using the tool to evaluate intervention efficacy.
• The number of publications linked to the use of our platform, indicating the success of the solution utility in scientifically monitoring disease outbreak and intervention efficacy.

Between core staff, contractors, and interns, the current Base Operations team size is 10  full-time staff equivalent.  

Target funding will result in the hire of an additional four full-time staff members.

The Base Operations team is well suited to grow and deliver this solution, having already delivered a solution for an analogous problem.  Team skills and background include project management, business, data science, artificial intelligence, and customer relationship management.  Furthermore, the team is multi-national and incentivized to provide a solution that works for the world. Base Operations employees hail from six different countries across four different continents.  

Base Operations will use any funding to further grow its team to both meet this new challenge and serve its existing customer base.  This includes hiring a dedicated project manager to manage this solution and interface with key stakeholders to ensure deliverables meet customer needs.

We are applying to Solve for access to a robust network that can help us tackle barriers related to funding, creating data standards, and shifting culture in key US institutions towards a data-driven public policy testing and implementation.

Base Operations would like to partner with public health experts in academia, NGOs, and other global health organizations to define standard data formats for use by its solution.

Base Operations would also like to work with public health scientists to confirm how the solution could best be used for evaluating intervention efficacy within communities.  Public health scientists will have input into the product roadmap, helping Base Operations ensure features are user-friendly and prioritized appropriately.

Our solution allows stakeholders to monitor disease outbreaks across a community to ensure an equitable response that raises the health (or decreases disease impact) for everyone.  The use of a geospatial mapping system makes it readily transparent when there are disparities among communities.

We believe our solution could be used to ensure equitable inclusion of refugees in health crisis response.

Our solution would ultimately decrease a disease outbreak's effect on women.

This solution uses AI to determine relationships between disease outbreak patterns and interventions, environmental factors, and other variables.  Understanding these relationships enables stakeholders to employ the most effective interventions to reduce the effect of disease outbreak.

Our platform could be used to monitor supply chain services and intervention efficacy.