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Utilizing Advanced Telecommunication Strategies to Enhance the Response of Emergency Medical Services Volunteers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2020

Ziv Dadon*
Affiliation:
Jesselson Integrated Heart Center, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel
Evan Avraham Alpert
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel
Eli Jaffe
Affiliation:
Marketing and International Relations, Magen David Adom, Tel Aviv, Israel
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to: Ziv Dadon, Jesselson Integrated Heart Center, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Shmu’el Bait St 12, Jerusalem, 9103102, Israel (e-mail: [email protected])

Abstract

Emergency medical services (EMS) provides a critical role in the rapid treatment, stabilization, and transfer of patients in the prehospital setting. The national EMS provider for Israel has developed a robust and unique organization of volunteers with advanced telecommunication strategies to activate and direct them in order to improve these processes. The volunteers include local high school students, international college students, emergency medical technicians, on-call volunteers, motorcyclists, and Life Guardian first responders. The telecommunication strategies include pagers, push-to-talk over cellular, and sophisticated smartphone-based software applications. These are monitored and directed via a central command and control station. Such processes, both on an organizational as well as technical level, can be adapted to improve prehospital emergency care.

Type
Concepts in Disaster Medicine
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc.

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