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SAN ANTONIO
MEDICINE

and able to meet the many challenges that lay ahead, but how would Sunshine Cottage School for the Deaf, San Antonio Independent
we manage it all? What systems would we use? How would we account School District, UTHSCSA Nixon Library, IDEA Schools, Corazon
for the donations and accurately report them to state and local agen- de San Antonio and the BCMS Alliance. BCMS’s final donation of
cies? How would we stay in constant contact with stakeholders, dona- PPE went to the government of Namibia, Africa. The PPE donation
tion sources and clinics? These important questions led us to the consisted of 5 pallets of KN95s, cloth masks, disposable surgical masks
creation, design and implementation of a proprietary emergency man- and liquid hand sanitizer. It was an honor to help the citizens of
agement PPE database that would serve as the center point for the pro- Namibia with our donation of PPE to help fight the COVID-19 pan-
gram’s entire operations from end to end. demic which is still going on.
The PPE database took two weeks of around-the-clock efforts to first In closing, I would like to recognize the staff of BCMS and medical
conceptualize, correctly build and then test under pressure (and did I students who helped with the difficult work of delivery, pick-up, sorting
mention test it some more?) Like any database technology project, there and shipping out PPE. No easy feat by any measure, so my thanks go
was a continuous need for the refinement and optimization of the out to this dedicated group of people. A special acknowledgment for
records, the formatting and the reporting processes. Ours was no excep- the heroism of our frontline medical personnel, who truly deserve our
tion to this rule. After one month of real-world application (also known deepest gratitude and appreciation for their continued contributions
as bumps in the road), the system kinks were finally ironed out, the crit- to the health and well-being of our communities. As for me, I will be
ical processes were clearly identified, and what emerged soon after grew with the program until the last request for PPE is received and its last
to become a repeatable, scalable, and ultra-effective emergency manage- mask is dispatched. And so, the work continues . . .
ment database that has successfully accounted for 100% of all PPE ar-
ticles and their destinations across South Texas and beyond. Christopher Ruano is a U.S. Army veteran, and a 20+ year
Fast forward to today, the program has successfully donated and de- intelligence practitioner who specializes in Continuity of Oper-
livered over 650,000 items of PPE, effectively meeting the PPE needs ations (COOP), Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP), Joint
of BCMS members and thousands of medical practitioners alike. Ad- Targeting, C4ISR, Human Terrain System (HTS), Foreign Internal De-
ditionally, BCMS donated almost 6 million PPE articles to the San fense (FID) and Security Force Assistance (SFA).
Antonio Food Bank, over 300,000 to the Texas Med Clinic, Haven for
Hope, Catholic Charities and dozens of community sources such as

Visit us at www.bcms.org 39