EmerLoc: location-based services for emergency medical incidents.

Background: Recent developments in positioning systems and telecommunications have provided the technology needed for the development of location aware medical applications. We developed a system, named EmerLoc, which is based upon this technology and uses a set of sensors that are attached to the patient's body, a micro-computing unit which is responsible for processing the sensor readings and a central monitoring unit, which coordinates the data flow.

Objective: To demonstrate that the proposed system is technically feasible and acceptable for the potential users.

Method: Transmission speed is assessed mostly by means of transmission of DICOM compliant images in various operational scenarios. The positioning functionality was established both outdoor using GPS and indoor using the UCLA Nibble system. User acceptability was assessed in a hospital setting by 15 physicians who filled in a questionnaire after having used the system in an experimental setting.

Results: Transmission speeds ranged from 88kB/s for a IEEE 802.11 infrastructure to 2.5kB/s for a GSM/GPRS scenario. Positioning accuracy based on GPS was 5-10m. The physicians rated the technical aspects on average above 3 on a 5-point scale. Only the data presentation was assessed to be not satisfactory (2.81 on a 5-point scale).

Conclusion: The reported results prove the feasibility of the proposed architecture and its alignment with widely established practices and standards, while the reaction of potential users who evaluated the system is quite positive.