A Mobile Solution for Fast and Accurate Medical Emergency Reporting

In life-threatening situations in which a second counts, the availability of an efficient and effective Emergency Medical Services (EMS) system can make the difference between life and death. In spite of this fact, healthcare institutions in developing countries did not give the necessary attention to the development of their EMS systems. A primary measure for an EMS system performance is its response time. Response time is divided into several components. However, almost all literature tackling its improvement focused only on the travel time component. In this research, the time taken to report a case is also considered to improve response time. A mobile application for the citizens' use is proposed. The application works with other corresponding applications in the EMS system side. The contributed application is a component of an integrated system that comprises also ambulance dispatching, and relocation tools that lower response time. It enables easier, faster and accurate incident reporting and better call screening. The proposed solution also provides a secondary dispatch strategy that can be used jointly with the primary central dispatch strategy in cases of high emergency to lower the overall response time. Data collected by the application will potentially support decisions like where to locate new ambulance stations. The system aims to develop the Egyptian Emergency Medical Service (EMS) system. However, it can be easily adapted to other EMS systems in different countries. In a future research, a complete integrated system will be presented. Its effectiveness will be tested and results will be communicated.