Title: Information flow and situational awareness in emergency medical dispatch

Authors: Teija Norri-Sederholm; Juhani Seppälä; Kaija Saranto; Heikki Paakkonen

Addresses: Department of Health and Social Management, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 1627, 20211 Kuopio, Finland ' Emergency care Degree Programme, Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences, P.O. Box 9, 48401 Kotka, Finland ' Department of Health and Social Management, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 1627, 20211 Kuopio, Finland ' Advanced Clinical Care Programme, Arcada University of Applied Sciences, Jan Magnussonin aukio 1, 00560 Helsinki, Finland

Abstract: One of the key factors in the daily work in emergency medical dispatch incident monitoring is ensuring that they have enough of the right type of information when making decisions and cooperating with other authorities. Finding out the critical information needed and the flow of information during multi-authority missions when receiving and sharing information, enables to obtain and receive situational awareness in incident monitoring. It can be concluded that information needs and targets to deliver information are different depending on the type of the incident. The current official authority communication systems can support adequate information flow in prehospital emergency care.

Keywords: emergency medical dispatch; critical information; information flow; incident monitoring; situational awareness; emergency management; information sharing; prehospital emergency care; health emergency response.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2016.075134

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2016 Vol.16 No.1, pp.72 - 85

Received: 28 Apr 2015
Accepted: 03 Nov 2015
Published online: 04 Mar 2016 *

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