Accident & Emergency Informatics : Terminologies and Standards are needed for Digital Health in the Early Rescue Chain

Abstract

Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) has released a draft of its Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020-2024. Accident & emergency informatics (A&EI) addresses these targets providing fully automatic and specific rescue calls, which are generated by smart implants, smart clothes, smart wearables, smart vehicles, smart homes, or the Internet of Things (IoT). These smart environments monitor unobtrusively and continuously environmental, behavioural, physiological, or psychological parameters. In near future, they will autonomously generate specific alerts on adverse (health) events. A&EI interconnects the information and communication technology (ICT) systems in the early rescue chain. It enables semantically interoperable information exchange by the International Standard Accident Number (ISAN). In this paper, we describe key ICT components of the early rescue chain: alarming, responding, and curing instances. We suggest a minimum dataset that contains an event identifier, time and location, the type of event, and the number of victims including – if available – their identity. Concerning location, we address navigation on static as well as dynamic sites, within buildings, and brute-force getting into vehicles. Here, there is a lack of international classifications, terminologies, and standards to support semantically interoperable information exchange in the early rescue chain without any humans in the loop.