Technology Assessment
The rapid evolution of science and technology has brought profound changes in the operation and effectiveness of many agencies in the public sector. Today, technology plays a pivotal role in at least three policy areas of primary interest to Gryphon Scientific:
Homeland Security
Assessments of the technology and deployment strategies for detection and security technologies
Evaluating Protein Detection Kits for Use in Responding to Biological Events
As an Abt Associates employee, Rocco Casagrande and his staff evaluated technologies usable by first responders when assessing the threat posed by suspicious "white powders" that may be a biological agent or a hoax. To do this, we first identified and acquired relevant technologies, even those not marketed for this purpose. We then developed a standardized testing matrix for the kit, which included stimulants to test against, quantity of replicates, and definitions of positive and negative readings. After the experiments were performed by a subcontracted laboratory, our staff analyzed the data. The six kits that performed best in the laboratory were taken into field tests to ensure that personnel without scientific backgrounds could use the kit in the field.
Red Team Assessment of Biological Defenses
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has the primary responsibility for the evaluation and deployment of systems for the early detection of a biological attack on our cities. Although there are several systems used in biological defense, these detection systems rely on only a few specific molecular techniques. When used on pure samples of biological material, these systems are generally robust, and can be used reliably on any pathogen. However, biological agents are rarely expressed into the environment as pure microbes and are often adulterated with materials to enhance their dispersal or survival in the environment. These materials, although not added for this purpose, could potentially interfere with these detection techniques or make the agent resistant to collection from the environment. Of higher concern, a terrorist, cognizant of the nature of biological agent detection schemes, could intentionally add materials to their agent mixtures for the express purpose of making the attack undetectable. Currently, it is unknown what technology is accessible to terrorists to make their biological agents "invisible" to current detection schemes. In order to fully evaluate the robustness of our current defensive systems and to anticipate future science and technology needs, the following information is needed:
- What technologies (or release strategies) could be used in the production of a biological agent to make it evade detection?
- What information would be available to terrorists without access to classified information and how could they use this information to answer the question above?
- How can current detection systems be improved to counter the possibility of a "stealthy" biological weapon?
To execute this project, we divided it into several tasks as follows:
- Determine what a terrorist can learn about our biological defenses
- Determine what compounds have historically been added in the formulation process of making a biological weapon that could adversely affect biological defenses
- Determine what a terrorist can learn from the scientific literature about intentionally disguising, cloaking or confounding collection of BW agents
- Based on these findings, make suggestions on improvements of current biological defenses
To accomplish these goals we used the following techniques:
- Red-team analysis to analyze defense systems from a terrorist-point of view
- Analysis in biochemistry, microbiology and molecular biology to determine the efficacy of scientific schemes to defeat detection assays and systems.
- Modeling to estimate the detection efficiency of the system and the likelihood that an attack would go undetected.
Working with Abt Associates, Gryphon Scientific provided the project director for this entire effort, lending intellectual and managerial leadership to successfully complete the project and deliver the report to the client.
Public Safety
Studies of biotechnologies for crime and drug detection
Applications of Biotechnology for the Control of Illegal Logging
For a National Institute of Justice contract with Abt Associates, we reviewed technological means to identify, prevent or assess the impact of illegal logging. In this study, we highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of currently available technology and pointed to promising research opportunities that could lead to improved capabilities in the future.
Public Health
Analysis of a range of healthcare systems and products
Modeling Medical Needs in the Aftermath of Terrorist Attacks
In this project, for AHRQ, the team consisting of Abt Associates, Cornell Medical School, and Gryphon Scientific, is to build a software-based tool that enables local emergency planners to estimate the medical resources needed to respond to terrorist attacks involving various weapons of mass destruction. The tool will be able to calculate the medical needs required by any urban area in the U.S. struggling to respond to attacks with chemical weapons, toxic industrial chemicals, contagious and non-contagious biological agents, radiological dispersion devices, improvised nuclear devices, and high-energy radioactive point sources.
On this team, Gryphon Scientific provides one of the two co-principal investigators who is leading all efforts that require subject matter expertise related to weapons of mass destruction. As co-principal investigator, Gryphon Scientific is providing leadership regarding the overall architecture of the tool and is charged with ensuring that the tool remains useful to end-users. Furthermore, the Gryphon team is taking the lead in providing casualty estimates (including the time-dependent appearance of casualties) that would result from these attacks through the use of sophisticated dispersion, epidemiology and pathogenicity/toxicity models.
Evaluating Strategies to Distribute Vaccines and Therapeutics
For the Department of Homeland Security through a contract to Abt Associates from MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, Rocco Casagrande, then an employee of Abt Associates, modeled the cost of efficacy of several strategies to distribute medication and vaccines to millions of people. To estimate the efficacy of each system, we modeled the casualties that would occur in the aftermath of attacks with contagious and non-contagious pathogens in the presence or absence of various medical response systems.
Evaluating Telemedicine Strategies
For the National Institute of Justice, Tracor Systems Technologies implemented a telemedicine study in three federal prisons in Pennsylvania to determine if health care could be improved at a lower cost. As a subcontractor, Abt Associates conducted an evaluation of the impact of the demonstration under the supervision of Joan Mullen, now Managing Partner of Gryphon Scientific. The evaluation compared patterns of health care utilization before and after the demonstration; utilization at the demonstration prisons was also compared with that observed in other federal prisons during the same period. Concluding that a prison telemedicine network can reduce costs and improve correctional healthcare, the Federal Bureau of Prisons decided to implement the technology more broadly in the federal prison system.
Publications on Technology Assessment Topics