Smart ambulance system for highlighting emergency-routes

Abstract

An ambulance is a vehicle equipped with medical devices to guarantee the transportation of patients to healthcare institutions such as specialized hospitals and general hospitals. They are designed to allow paramedics access them promptly to provide required treatment and emergency care while transporting patients. In a life-threatening emergency, it is necessary to paramedics to act quickly and carry patients promptly even if there is traffic. In fact, the traffic and congestion delay significantly the movement of the ambulance. Drivers who are near the ambulance can make prompt action to give space to the ambulance. But drivers who are far from the ambulance will not take any action until they notice the ambulance behind them. In other words, those drivers are not aware of the active emergency-route chosen by the ambulance. Several solutions have been developed to improve the responsiveness of ambulances to reach patients and hospitals faster. However, these solutions are not considering the emergency-route selected by ambulances resulting in delays in responsiveness. In this paper, we propose a smart ambulance system that takes into consideration highlighting emergency-routes. The solution is a type of smart healthcare emergency applications that is designed to progress the ambulance infrastructure. It aims to keep drivers aware of the emergency-routes chosen by ambulances. The system is composed of server application, user emergency end-user application and paramedic end-user application. The server is responsible about managing messages between end-user applications. The user emergency application is designed to show mainly the location of the patient and the location of the ambulance(s). And the paramedic application is designed to locate the patient and find the appropriate hospital. Based on initial assessment using questionnaire, the proposed system showed it can improve the transportation time of patients. - 2019 IEEE.