Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NIGHTINGALE (Novel InteGrated toolkit for enhanced pre-Hospital life support and Triage IN challenGing And Large Emergencies)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-10-01 bis 2023-03-31
Major emergencies have become more frequent the last decades. They affect more and more people, challenging the healthcare sector and response and recovery agencies. It therefore imperative to increase citizens’ upkeep and feeling of safety and provide affected people the top-level healthcare that modern technology and current civil protection systems can offer. However, today’s emergency medical services and non-medical civil protection practitioners often have to rely on complicated or even outdated procedures and technology of the past. Disasters differ considerably in nature, time scale, geographic extent, perils and impacts, and emergency medical services and non-medical CP practitioners face a multitude of challenges. They often deal with limited resources and awareness, unpredictable amount of citizens in need of care whilst requiring numerous treatment protocols to set in place, extreme difficulties in collaboration and communication, time pressure and effort consuming procedures in uncharted surroundings. Armouring medical and public safety agencies with all the tools that modern technology has to offer towards a step change to pre-hospital life support and triage is of outmost importance.
NIGHTINGALE develops, integrates, tests and will deploy, demonstrate and validate a Novel Integrated Toolkit for Emergency Medical Response (NIT-MR), at the service of emergency medical services and non-medical civil protection agencies (fire brigades, police and search and rescue personnel, but also volunteers and citizens) which ensures an upgrade to Pre-hospital life support and Triage. This is achieved by delivering enhanced Operational Capacity to respond to mass casualty incidents complemented by the inclusion of commonly agreed methods and guidelines. This will comprise a multitude of tools, services and applications required for 1) upgrading evaluation of injured and affected population and handle casualties (Triage) by offering them the means to perform digital identification, allow traceability, support fast diagnosis and prognosis and continuous monitoring and enable accurate classification of medical condition; 2) optimising pre-hospital life support and damage control through AI-based tracking, tracing, routing and utilisation enhancements of assets, resources and capacities as well as enabling continuous monitoring and correlation of vital signs and actions; 3) allowing shared response across emergency medical services, non-medical civil protection personnel, volunteers and citizens by augmenting their field of view, information sharing and communications between teams and with victims.
The NIT-MR will be provided at the service of the users for extensive testing, training and validation in the framework of a rich Training, Testing and Validation Programme – of Table-Top Exercises (TTXs), Laboratory Integration Tests (LITs), Small-Scale Field Tests (SSXs) and Full-Scale Field Validations (FSXs) – towards empowering the emergency medical response and handling of mass casualty incidents to its fullest.
NIGHTINGALE develops, integrates, tests and will deploy, demonstrate and validate a Novel Integrated Toolkit for Emergency Medical Response (NIT-MR), at the service of emergency medical services and non-medical civil protection agencies (fire brigades, police and search and rescue personnel, but also volunteers and citizens) which ensures an upgrade to Pre-hospital life support and Triage. This is achieved by delivering enhanced Operational Capacity to respond to mass casualty incidents complemented by the inclusion of commonly agreed methods and guidelines. This will comprise a multitude of tools, services and applications required for 1) upgrading evaluation of injured and affected population and handle casualties (Triage) by offering them the means to perform digital identification, allow traceability, support fast diagnosis and prognosis and continuous monitoring and enable accurate classification of medical condition; 2) optimising pre-hospital life support and damage control through AI-based tracking, tracing, routing and utilisation enhancements of assets, resources and capacities as well as enabling continuous monitoring and correlation of vital signs and actions; 3) allowing shared response across emergency medical services, non-medical civil protection personnel, volunteers and citizens by augmenting their field of view, information sharing and communications between teams and with victims.
The NIT-MR will be provided at the service of the users for extensive testing, training and validation in the framework of a rich Training, Testing and Validation Programme – of Table-Top Exercises (TTXs), Laboratory Integration Tests (LITs), Small-Scale Field Tests (SSXs) and Full-Scale Field Validations (FSXs) – towards empowering the emergency medical response and handling of mass casualty incidents to its fullest.
The report includes the work performed towards the project objectives. All deliverables due to M18 have been submitted and the NIGHTINGALE consortium has successfully collected the necessary for the next steps of the project implementation user requirements, derived the functional and non-functional requirements and technical specifications and defined the overall NIGHTINGALE platform architecture. Also, all the necessary actions for the successful completion of first two table top exercises (TTX1,2), the Laboratory Integration Test (LIT) and for the preparation of the Small Scale Exercise (SSX) and the training activities of the project have been started during the first period of the project, while significant milestones have been reached, which includes also the realization of 2 Round Tables related to the definition of Common Denominators for Triage and Pre-Hospital life support as well as the delivery of the first prototypes of the Toolkit's components which have been demonstrated to the participating end-users and external organizations during the 2nd TTX in Israel.
NIGHTINGALE aims to improve current procedures and methodologies for mass casualty incidents by introducing, testing and upgrading methods, tools and guidelines to conduct pre-hospital life support and triage. Towards this direction the results, will contribute in the definition of recommendations and guidelines to relevant stakeholders at national and EU wide level to improve operational capacity and effectiveness.
The project’s toolkit includes a multiplicity of novel technologies and intelligence services such as: field devices to upgrade the Triage process and enhance Situational Awareness (triage bracelets, drones with capabilities to detect victims, thermographic scanning solutions, AR head display and smartphone applications for the field responders); services that optimise sense making (optimisation of assets and resources, risk identification and decision support and information fusion) and systems that improve multi-agency collaboration and sharing of common operational picture as well as citizen to 112 interaction (the NIGHTINGALE C3I and the NG112 PSAP system).
Furthermore, NIGHTINGALE aims to upgrade the Training and Exercises of the medical and non-medical CP responders’ community by delivering a novel Training Digitisation and Scenario building Platform. In addition, a training Programme (Round-Tables and Exercises), which evolves around enhancement of methods and guidelines, devised by the practitioners, will define common denominators for conducting the discrete actions of Triage and pre-Hospital life support processes.
Finally, NIGHTINGALE embeds a strong societal dimension as CA represents the CP volunteers’ society; as well as the project addresses legal, ethical, security considerations and relevant impact assessments for delivering sustainable, accepted, credible and adoptable results.
There are several policy and social implications of NIGHTINGALE that need to be addressed especially after the successful demonstration of the research results. Saving lives during emergencies is the priority, but this also has an impact on the training of citizens and volunteers concerning first aid, and the increase in public awareness of emergencies. Policymakers should consider the importance of citizen-friendly communication concerning how emergencies are dealt with, investing in first aid training for citizens and volunteers and consider the concerns of citizens regarding the use of data by technological tools. Post-emergency must not be underestimated and is here that political drivers can make a difference by implementing policies that strengthen community resilience.
The role of the European Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), which is involving civil society and industrial partners, can further stimulate the development and implementation of the relevant policy frameworks.
The project is currently at its second year of implementation, while through thorough discussions with users is evident the need for enhancing overall handling of MCIs, both at technology but at procedural levels.
The project’s toolkit includes a multiplicity of novel technologies and intelligence services such as: field devices to upgrade the Triage process and enhance Situational Awareness (triage bracelets, drones with capabilities to detect victims, thermographic scanning solutions, AR head display and smartphone applications for the field responders); services that optimise sense making (optimisation of assets and resources, risk identification and decision support and information fusion) and systems that improve multi-agency collaboration and sharing of common operational picture as well as citizen to 112 interaction (the NIGHTINGALE C3I and the NG112 PSAP system).
Furthermore, NIGHTINGALE aims to upgrade the Training and Exercises of the medical and non-medical CP responders’ community by delivering a novel Training Digitisation and Scenario building Platform. In addition, a training Programme (Round-Tables and Exercises), which evolves around enhancement of methods and guidelines, devised by the practitioners, will define common denominators for conducting the discrete actions of Triage and pre-Hospital life support processes.
Finally, NIGHTINGALE embeds a strong societal dimension as CA represents the CP volunteers’ society; as well as the project addresses legal, ethical, security considerations and relevant impact assessments for delivering sustainable, accepted, credible and adoptable results.
There are several policy and social implications of NIGHTINGALE that need to be addressed especially after the successful demonstration of the research results. Saving lives during emergencies is the priority, but this also has an impact on the training of citizens and volunteers concerning first aid, and the increase in public awareness of emergencies. Policymakers should consider the importance of citizen-friendly communication concerning how emergencies are dealt with, investing in first aid training for citizens and volunteers and consider the concerns of citizens regarding the use of data by technological tools. Post-emergency must not be underestimated and is here that political drivers can make a difference by implementing policies that strengthen community resilience.
The role of the European Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), which is involving civil society and industrial partners, can further stimulate the development and implementation of the relevant policy frameworks.
The project is currently at its second year of implementation, while through thorough discussions with users is evident the need for enhancing overall handling of MCIs, both at technology but at procedural levels.