Air versus Land Vehicle Decisions for Interfacility Air Medical Transport

• Main Author: Fatahi, Arsham
• Other Authors: Donmez, Birsen
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Air ambulance; emergency medical services; decision support systems; emergency treatment; 0546; 0769
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/43989

In emergency medical transport, “time to definite care” is very important. Emergency medical services and transport medicine agencies have several possible vehicle options for interfacility transfers. Use of a land vehicle, helicopter, or fixed wing aircraft will be dependent on patient condition, distance between sending and receiving hospitals, crew configuration and capabilities, and other factors such as weather and road conditions. This thesis lays out the complex process of patient transfers and highlights the challenges in decision making under time pressure; it then describes the behaviour of human operators in estimating time to definite care. To support the operators in choosing a transportation mode, a decision support tool was built, which provides relevant time estimates for interfacility transfers based on historical dispatch and call data. The goal is to enable operators to make evidence-based decisions on vehicle allocation. A prototype interface was generated and was evaluated through a usability study.