1. Looking Ahead Ethan Hildebrand, BS, LATG Animal Systems Coordinator
Office of Animal Resources
Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Vivarium Operational Excellence Network
Webinar March 28, 2018

2. Harvard FAS Animal Care Details
Ave daily census: ~9,500 cages (98% mice, no large animals)
3 buildings (including Office)
55 animal rooms, 2 cagewash areas
25 FTE’s (20 = HUCTW members)
Departmental Org. at a glance…
Director & Attending Vet
Senior clinical vet
Manager
2 supervisors
1 vet tech
2 admin staff
14 animal care techs
3 cage wash techs

3. Today’s Tools (in no particular order)
Animal transfers
Rodent counting form
eBilling (Per Diem Invoices)
Special husbandry requests
Custom cage process
SOP creation1
Training log 2
health templates3
Credit: 1, 2 J. Jorgenson, 3 Dr. K. Pritchett-Corning

4. Lightbulb Moment
Slide Credit: S. Niemi, “Epiphany!”, The DIY App Revolution: One Program's Journey, 68th AALAS, Austin TX, 10/17/2017

5. Animal transfers - Tech  +
Website
Web form

6. Animal transfers - process
Online form  to supervisors
Review  forward to ACTs
ACTs get info on iPhone  complete transfer
ACTs ‘reply all’ to notify of completion

7. DATA VISIBILITY & ANALYSIS
Can we go farther?
Communication
Workplace Visibility
TEAMS
Managing Work
Standardization + + + +
DATA VISIBILITY & ANALYSIS
Data Collection

8. My Goals Tools for maximum benefit with minimal disruption
Use data to better understand the program
Evenly distribute workload

9. Data to inform management decisions
My Goals
Tools for maximum benefit with minimal disruption
Use data to better understand the program
Evenly distribute workload
Data to inform management decisions
Make the work easier

10. Maximum Benefit, Minimal Disruption
Work cage side (iPhone app)
Dashboards
Collect data
Intuitive
Fast, fewest possible steps
Expandable

11. “Rapid Mobile App Development” (RMAD)
Tools for mobile app development
No/low user coding involved
Can customize to meet a specific need

12. Headquarters: Seattle, WA
Founded: 2012
Website:
YouTube Channel:

13. Room Tasks app

14. “ROOMS” view (homepage)
shows a list of all active housing rooms
scroll through to see all rooms
color bars indicate status
Green = completed / done
Red = incomplete / not done
Orange (Daily only) = started

15. “ROOMS DETAILS” view
Room Number
Action Buttons
Tasks and Task Status

16. Digital Task List 2 1

17. “Status” view

18. Data Entry
Action Buttons

19. Data Entry - continued

20. Data Collected

21. Questions and Answers
Which rooms require the most cage changes?

22. Questions and Answers Who performs the most cage separations?
Anonymized
Who performs the most cage separations?

23. Roll Out Introduce Training, training, training
“Tell ‘em once, tell ‘em again, then tell ‘em a third time”
Visibility, and documentation
Practice
Pilot – let’s see how it goes…

24. Help Google search YouTube Support pages Solution Partners – AppSheet
“Google sheet import range query”, >1M hits,
YouTube
AppSheet:
Learn Google Spreadsheets:
Support pages
AppSheet:
Google:
Solution Partners – AppSheet
(Randy Nichols, Pres.)

25. Animal Systems Coordinator
Ethan Hildebrand
Animal Systems Coordinator
Office of Animal Resources, Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Office: (617)

26. Questions Let’s open the microphones:
What problems do you have that technology can help you with TODAY?