Health monitoring systems for massive emergency situations
Jordan Smalls, Yue Wang, Xi Li, Z. Chen, K. Wendy Tang · 2009
In this project our goal is to create a health monitoring system that can transmit the vital signs of a patient through an ad-hoc wireless sensor network for a mass causality emergency application. The health monitoring device is to be placed on an injured victim during an emergency and act as a sensor node to connect to a wireless ad-hoc network to transmit the patient's vital sign data. The target market for this system is emergency response institutions such as municipal emergency services, city and state EMS and federal emergency services (e.g., FEMA or the National Guard). Most Wireless health monitoring systems targeted home users and we have not found too many systems designed for emergency responses. Therefore, we expect our system to encounter only a small amount of competitions. The system is to be used as part of the first response to a mass causality incident that might overwhelm the capacity of the first responders. In this situation, the possible loss of communication infrastructure which could force the first responders to use unconventional means of communication. The first responders would need to set up a base of operation to recover and treat the disaster victims. In this base of operation, the medical staff will set up the central server that will receive data from the health monitoring devices. We are hopeful that our system will facilitate the prioritization of delegating medical attention. Our system should also benefit the organization and resource management of a simple triage. Our vision is that such a wireless health monitoring system will make a more efficient emergency response to save more lives.