Personalized Emergency Medical Assistance for Disabled People
Authors:Chittaro L., Carchietti E., De Marco L., Zampa A.
Published in:User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, Vol. 20, no. 4-5, pp. 407-440.
Abstract:Emergency medical services (EMS) rely on well established operational instructions and predefined procedures allowing to promptly and accurately choose a proper course of action in the field. The procedures, on which medical first responders are specifically trained, target the most frequently occurring cases and do not include special cases concerning (sensory, motor or cognitive) disabled persons. As a result, they may not be optimal and require changes and additions for the various types of disabilities. This paper proposes both a detailed user model for EMS that can account for peculiar aspects of the many existing disabilities and an adaptive information system called PRESYDIUM (Personalized Emergency System for Disabled Humans) that provides tailored instructions in the field for helping EMS nurses and volunteers in dealing with disabled persons. More precisely, we will illustrate and discuss: (i) the design and development process of the system, (ii) the user model, which is partly based on the ICF (International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health) standard proposed by the World Health Organization, (iii) the knowledge base used by the system to provide tailored instructions, (iv) the Web-based architecture of the system, (v) the different interfaces – including one for mobile devices – the system provides to enable all the identified stakeholders (disabled persons, their families, clinicians, EMS call center operators, medical first responders in ambulances) to easily contribute data and/or receive personalized instructions, (vi) the evaluation of the validity of the user model and of the usability of PRESYDIUM which have been conducted with end users.
