Operations

Apps that track food supply chains could make it easier for customers to tip the farmer who produced their coffee or cocoa. But a new paper suggests that this well-intended feature might reduce farmers’ overall income.

Using data from infrared location tracking tags, Yale SOM’s Lesley Meng and her co-authors determined that nurses visit rooms that are farther from the nurses station less frequently, but for longer.

Yale SOM’s Vahideh Manshadi and Scott Rodilitz worked with Food Rescue US to hone their strategy for connecting volunteers with food donations. Their findings can help other nonprofits harness the power of crowds for social good.

Epidemiological models have played an influential role in governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yale SOM’s Edieal Pinker takes a look back at one of the most influential models and argues that such rigorous efforts at understanding the likely course of the disease, while imperfect, are critical to good decision making.

Nicolas Encina ’10 and his colleagues at Ariadne Labs have been demonstrating the potential of a collaborative, multidisciplinary process for designing and scaling simple improvements to healthcare—and also its limits.

Using a computer model, the researchers found that weekly testing will keep outbreaks under control under relatively optimistic scenarios, but that testing every three days would be more reliable.

Yale SOM’s Edward Kaplan used early reports out of Wuhan to evaluate the likely effectiveness of common tactics, such as isolation of patients and quarantine, in keeping the disease from spreading in new regions.