Abstract

In emergency situations, communication between the ambulance crew and an emergency department in the hospital can be crucial in determining the best decision for a patient's health. Currently, when an ambulance crew reports at an emergency, paramedics use voice communication from scene of emergency to the hospital. In critical life threatening situations, use of high quality visual images and live video streaming can allow paramedics on the scene of an emergency to take better informed decisions by liaising with expert consultants in the hospital emergency department. This paper proposes the relay of high definition video between the ambulance crew and the hospital using public Internet infrastructure through utilising a virtual path slice controller. The paper also proposes a set of criteria for evaluating the use of video in emergency scenarios taking into account technical, user, application and process requirements together with an overview of the benefits, risks and ethical issues. (C) 2013 Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.