M-Health in Prehospital Emergency Medicine: Experiences From the EU Funded Project LiveCity

Abstract

Prehospital emergency medicine strives to treat (potentially) life-threatening conditions as early as possible and thus reduce preventable disabilities and deaths. MHealth enables the transfer of knowledge to the emergency site. The purpose of this chapter is to display different approaches. Knowledge can be brought to the emergency site e.g. by smart phone applications allowing retrieval of data or by real-time communication with a remote medical expert. High definition video communication in real time offers the highest amount of mHealth communication currently available in prehospital emergency medicine. Projects, using such a video communication are discussed. In the European Union funded project LiveCity a special video camera was developed and tested. After having encountered simulated emergency scenarios, emergency doctors and paramedics rated the video connection as helpful, an improvement of the quality of patient care and could imagine working with such a video consultation. MHealth has huge potential for the application in prehospital emergency medicine.