Award

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This Phase 1 STTR project will determine the feasibility of using web services, based on standard SOAP/XML (HL-7) protocols, to exchange Emergency Medical Services (EMS) field data with disparate hospital information systems. It will build upon a pre-hospital software package called iRevive, which consists of a network of wireless, handheld computers linked to a central database. The specific aims of the study address: 1) the business model, 2) the technical feasibility, and 3) the operational aspects of this information service. The business model will delineate the patient care, economic, and societal benefits of a standardized approach to exchanging healthcare information. It will analyze the use of the Trusted Agent paradigm, in an effort to determine the optimal way for knowledge rovers to negotiate, access, process, and securely store healthcare information. The technical feasibility will center on the incorporation of a SOAP/XML messaging format into our system. Lastly we will deploy and field test a web services version of iRevive. This will include the application of emerging data mining and knowledge discovery techniques to demonstrate the feasibility of analyzing raw field data. This project will foster the development of a coherent and continuous knowledge base of patient information that is capable of describing individual and population-based illness events, from the point of initial patient contact in the field to hospital discharge. It will serve as a platform for the development of a highly scalable, multi-organizational knowledge-based decision support system. This system will allow individual EMS systems to function locally, but act regionally, in response to a large scale event such as a multiple casualty incident (MCI) or mass casualty event (MCE). It will also aid in the development of new knowledge-based paradigms to enhance treatment algorithms and improve patient care.