Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Evaluative Research of Technologies for Prehospital Communication and Coordination: a Systematic Review

  • Mobile & Wireless Health
  • Published:
Journal of Medical Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Various technologies have been designed and developed to support communication and coordination between the field and hospital during a medical emergency. The usability issues and human factors entailed in these new technologies are important to their application and effectiveness, suggesting the need to examine this information in a systematic review. The systematic review aims to synthesize the user-centered evaluative research of prehospital communication technologies. We conducted a systematic literature search in four databases (Medline, Cochrane, Embase, and Web of Science) for articles published between the years 2000 and 2019. We included articles that evaluated the technologies developed for supporting prehospital communication and collaboration, and were published in English. A total of 918 articles were retrieved and screened, with 17 articles included for in-depth analysis. Two authors conducted independent screens and reviews of the articles using a list of inclusion/exclusion criteria and defined factors. The types of technology of reviewed articles included ambulance-based telemedicine, wearable, handheld, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Even though these technologies have demonstrated high levels of user acceptance, the reviewed studies noted a variety of challenges faced by emergency care providers, which were grouped into three categories—technical, usability, and organizational challenges. Our review also highlighted the paucity of evaluative research of prehospital communication technologies and the lack of user engagement throughout system design process. Based on the results, we discuss the importance of adopting user-centered design approaches and accounting for three social-technical factors in designing technologies for time-critical medical settings, including cognitive and physical stressor, workflow, and context. This systematic review presents an overview of key evaluative research of prehospital communication technologies. The paucity of evaluative research in prehospital communication technology and challenges faced in adopting advanced technological solutions in emergency care highlight the need to adopt user-centered design and take into account socio-technical issues at the point of system design.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Sarcevic, A., and Burd, R. S., Information handover in time-critical work. In: Proceedings of the ACM 2009 International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009. ACM, 301–310.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Aase, K., Soeyland, E., and Hansen, B., A standardized patient handover process: Perceptions and functioning. Safety Science Monitor 15(2):1–9, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Faraj, S., and Xiao, Y., Coordination in fast-response organizations. Management Science 52(8):1155–1169, 2006.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Meisel, Z. F., Shea, J. A., Peacock, N. J., Dickinson, E. T., Paciotti, B., Bhatia, R., Buharin, E., and Cannuscio, C. C., Optimizing the patient handoff between emergency medical services and the emergency department. Annals of emergency medicine 65(3):310–317, 2015 e311.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Rowlands, A., An evaluation of pre-hospital communication between ambulances and an accident and emergency department. London: SAGE Publications Sage UK, 2003.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  6. Zhang, Z., Sarcevic, A., and Bossen, C., Constructing common information spaces across distributed emergency medical teams. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2017. ACM, 934–947.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Xiao, Y., Kim, Y. J., Gardner, S. D., Faraj, S., and MacKenzie, C. F., Communication technology in trauma centers: A national survey. Journal of Emergency Medicine 30(1):21–28, 2006.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Chan, T. C., Killeen, J., Griswold, W., and Lenert, L., Information technology and emergency medical care during disasters. Academic Emergency Medicine 11(11):1229–1236, 2004.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Salvemini, A. V., Challenges for user-interface designers of telemedicine systems. Telemedicine and e-Health 5(2):163–168, 1999.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Buck, S., Nine human factors contributing to the user acceptance of telemedicine applications: A cognitive-emotional approach. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare 15(2):55–58, 2009.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Klaassen, B., van Beijnum, B. J., and Hermens, H. J., Usability in telemedicine systems—A literature survey. International Journal of Medical Informatics 93:57–69, 2016.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Viitanen, J., Hyppönen, H., Lääveri, T., Vänskä, J., Reponen, J., and Winblad, I., National questionnaire study on clinical ICT systems proofs: Physicians suffer from poor usability. International Journal of Medical Informatics 80(10):708–725, 2011.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Viitanen, J., and Kuusisto, A., Nykänen P usability of electronic nursing record systems: Definition and results from an evaluation study in Finland. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 2011, 333–338.

  14. Militello, L., Patterson, E. S., Tripp-Reimer, T., Asch, S. M., Fung, C. H., Glassman, P., and Anders, S., Doebbeling B clinical reminders: Why don't they use them? In: Proceedings of the human factors and ergonomics society annual meeting, 2004. Vol. 15. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications Sage CA, 1651–1655.

  15. Sarcevic, A., and Ferraro, N., On the use of electronic documentation systems in fast-paced, time-critical medical settings. Interacting with Computers 29(2):203–219, 2017.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Middleton, B., Bloomrosen, M., Dente, M. A., Hashmat, B., Koppel, R., Overhage, J. M., Payne, T. H., Rosenbloom, S. T., Weaver, C., and Zhang, J., Enhancing patient safety and quality of care by improving the usability of electronic health record systems: Recommendations from AMIA. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 20(e1):e2–e8, 2013.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  17. Rogers, H., Madathil, K. C., Agnisarman, S., Narasimha, S., Ashok, A., Nair, A., Welch, B. M., and McElligott, J. T., A systematic review of the implementation challenges of telemedicine systems in ambulances. Telemedicine and e-Health 23(9):707–717, 2017.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. Yperzeele, L., Van Hooff, R. J., De Smedt, A., Espinoza, A. V., Van Dyck, R., Van de Casseye, R., Convents, A., Hubloue, I., Lauwaert, D., and De Keyser, J., Feasibility of AmbulanCe-based telemedicine (FACT) study: Safety, feasibility and reliability of third generation in-ambulance telemedicine. PloS one 9(10):e110043, 2014.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., and Altman, D. G., Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: The PRISMA statement. Annals of Internal Medicine 151(4):264–269, 2009.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  20. Xiao, Y., Gagliano, D., LaMonte, M., Hu, P., Gaasch, W., Gunawadane, R., and Mackenzie, C., Design and evaluation of a real-time mobile telemedicine system for ambulance transport. Journal of High Speed Networks 9(1):47–56, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Tollefsen, W. W., Gaynor, M., Pepe, M., Myung, D., Welsh, M., and Moulton, S., iRevive: A pre-hospital database system for emergency medical services. International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management 6(4–6):454–469, 2005.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Tang, Z., Johnson, T. R., Tindall, R. D., and Zhang, J., Applying heuristic evaluation to improve the usability of a telemedicine system. Telemedicine and e-Health 12(1):24–34, 2006.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  23. Sibert, K., Ricci, M. A., Caputo, M., Callas, P. W., Rogers, F. B., Charash, W., Malone, P., Leffler, S. M., Clark, H., and Salinas, J., The feasibility of using ultrasound and video laryngoscopy in a mobile telemedicine consult. Telemedicine and e-Health 14(3):266–272, 2008.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. Reddy, M., Paul, S. A., Abraham, J., McNeese, M., DeFlitch, C., and Yen, J., Challenges to effective crisis management: Using information and communication technologies to coordinate emergency medical services and emergency department teams. International Journal of Medical Informatics 78(4):259–269, 2009.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  25. Schooley, B., Abed, Y., Murad, A., Horan, T. A., and Roberts, J., Design and field test of an mHealth system for emergency medical services. Health and Technology 3(4):327–340, 2013.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Chapman Smith, S. N., Brown, P. C., Waits, K. H., Wong, J. S., Bhatti, M. S., Toqeer, Q., Ricks, J. V., Stockner, M. L., Habtamu, T., and Seelam, J., Development and evaluation of a user-centered Mobile Telestroke platform. Telemedicine and e-Health 25(7):638–648, 2019.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  27. Bergrath, S., Rörtgen, D., Rossaint, R., Beckers, S. K., Fischermann, H., Brokmann, J. C., Czaplik, M., Felzen, M., Schneiders, M. T., and Skorning, M., Technical and organisational feasibility of a multifunctional telemedicine system in an emergency medical service – An observational study. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare 17(7):371–377, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1258/jtt.2011.110203.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  28. Felzen, M., Brokmann, J. C., Beckers, S. K., Czaplik, M., Hirsch, F., Tamm, M., Rossaint, R., and Bergrath, S., Improved technical performance of a multifunctional prehospital telemedicine system between the research phase and the routine use phase–an observational study. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare 23(3):402–409, 2017.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  29. Geisler, F., Kunz, A., Winter, B., Rozanski, M., Waldschmidt, C., Weber, J. E., Wendt, M., Zieschang, K., Ebinger, M., and Audebert, H. J., Telemedicine in Prehospital acute stroke care. Journal of the American Heart Association 8(6):e011729, 2019.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  30. Kwak, M. J., Kim, J. M., Shin, I. H., Shin, S. D., Song, K. J., Suh, G. J., and Kim, H. C., Real-time medical control using a wireless audio-video transmission device in a pre-hospital emergency service in Korea. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare 15(8):404–408, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1258/jtt.2009.090504.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  31. Cho, S. J., Kwon, I. H., and Jeong, J., Application of telemedicine system to prehospital medical control. Healthcare Informatics Research 21(3):196–200, 2015.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  32. Park, E., Kim, J. H., Nam, H. S., and Chang, H. J., Requirement analysis and implementation of smart emergency medical services. IEEE Access 6:42022–42029, 2018.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Espinoza, A. V., De Smedt, A., Guldolf, K., Vandervorst, F., Van Hooff, R. J., Tellez, H. F., Desmaele, S., Cambron, M., Hubloue, I., and Brouns, R., Opinions and beliefs about telemedicine for emergency treatment during ambulance transportation and for chronic care at home. Interactive Journal of Medical Research 5(1), 2016.

  34. Gilligan P, Bennett A, Houlihan A, Padki A, Owens N, Morris D, Chochliouros I, Mohammed A, Mutawa A, Eswararaj M (2018) The doctor can see you now: A key stakeholder study into the acceptability of ambulance based telemedicine.

  35. Johansson, A., Esbjörnsson, M., Nordqvist, P., Wiinberg, S., Andersson, R., Ivarsson, B., and Möller, S., Technical feasibility and ambulance nurses’ view of a digital telemedicine system in pre-hospital stroke care–a pilot study. International emergency nursing 44:35–40, 2019.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  36. Bevan N, Kirakowski J, J M What is usability? In: HJ B (ed) Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction, Stuttgart, 1991 1991. Elsevier,

  37. Goodhue, D. L., Understanding user evaluations of information systems. Management science 41(12):1827–1844, 1995.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Jiang J. J, Klein G (1999) User evaluation of information systems: By system typology. IEEE transactions on systems, man, cybernetics-part a: systems and humans 29 (1):111–116

  39. Kujala, S., User involvement: A review of the benefits and challenges. Behaviour information technology 22(1):1–16, 2003.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Norman D. A, Draper S. W (1986) User centered system design: New perspectives on human-computer interaction. CRC Press,

  41. Reddy, M., Pratt, W., Dourish, P., and Shabot, M., Sociotechnical requirements analysis for clinical systems. Methods of Information in Medicine 42(04):437–444, 2003.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  42. Berg, M., Patient care information systems and health care work: A sociotechnical approach. International Journal of Medical Informatics 55(2):87–101, 1999.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  43. Ariza, F., Kalra, D., and Potts, H., How do clinical information systems affect the cognitive demands of general practitioners?: Usability study with a focus on cognitive workload. Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics 22(4):379–390, 2015.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  44. Harrison, M. I., Koppel, R., and Bar-Lev, S., Unintended consequences of information technologies in health care—An interactive sociotechnical analysis. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 14(5):542–549, 2007.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  45. Ahmed, A., Chandra, S., Herasevich, V., Gajic, O., and Pickering, B., The effect of two different electronic health record user interfaces on intensive care provider task load, errors of cognition, and performance. Critical Care Medicine 39(7):1626–1634, 2011.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  46. Chen, Y., Documenting transitional information in EMR. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2010. ACM, 1787–1796.

    Google Scholar 

  47. http://www.emscharts.com. Accessed December, 19th 2019

  48. Bossen, C., The parameters of common information spaces: the heterogeneity of cooperative work at a hospital ward. In: Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2002. ACM, 176–185.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

N/A

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Pace University, New York, NY, 10038, USA

    Zhan Zhang & John Brazil

  2. College of Nursing, University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado, USA

    Mustafa Ozkaynak

  3. Health Science Library, University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado, USA

    Kristen Desanto

Authors
  1. Zhan Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. John Brazil
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Mustafa Ozkaynak
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Kristen Desanto
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhan Zhang.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

All authors declare that he/she has no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Mobile & Wireless Health

Appendices

Appendix 1: Keywords for literature search

Technology terms: Mobile health, telehealth, telemedicine, telenursing, tele-pathology, tele-radiology, tele-rehabilitation, information technology, communication technology.

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) terms: Ambulance, emergency fire dispatch, emergency medical dispatch, emergency medical service, emergency medical technician, emergency police dispatch, emergency dispatch, EMS communication system, paramedic, patient transport, prehospital emergency care, prehospital emergency service, prehospital triage.

Emergency Departments (ED) terms: Emergency department, emergency hospital service, emergency room, emergency unit, emergency ward, emergency psychiatric service, hospital emergency service, psychiatric emergency service, trauma center, trauma unit

Appendix 2

Table 5 A sample search strategy from Medline
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zhang, Z., Brazil, J., Ozkaynak, M. et al. Evaluative Research of Technologies for Prehospital Communication and Coordination: a Systematic Review. J Med Syst 44, 100 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-020-01556-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-020-01556-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation