Using smart glasses in medical emergency situations, a qualitative pilot study

Medical emergency situations happening outside a hospital require a large range of competencies from safe transportation of a patient to his/her medical stabilization before the transport. Paramedics are trained to face such situations and can handle most of them very well. Some situations need precise skills and knowledge that are very common in a hospital setting but less in prehospital settings. Currently, paramedics have to work mostly disconnected from hospital skills and knowledge. This may lead to delay of patient care and loss of information from the accident site to the hospital. In this paper, we present a pilot study assessing a new communication platform for prehospital care. With this platform, paramedics can access medical knowledge from hospital specialists directly on the accident site via video conferencing using smart glasses. The platform permits the transmission of vital parameters of a patient without delays so the specialist can follow the patient remotely and advise paramedics simultaneously. The preliminary results show that although the platform adds workload for the paramedics, it can add value for patient care because the emergency physician was more secure in giving advice when he/she could see the video and the vital parameters sent directly from the accident site. Furthermore, the emergency physician saw an added value in the capacity to prepare the arrival of the patient at the hospital, improving the continuity of care.