A Normative Enterprise Architecture for Guiding End-to-End Emergency Response Decision Support

This article examines the underlying architecture guiding the development and use of enterprise decision support systems that maintain the delivery of time critical public services. A normative architecture, developed from comparative cases involving San Mateo County and Mayo Clinic Emergency Medical Services systems, provides a collection of characteristics meant to guide an emergency response system toward a high level of performance and enable optimal decision-making. At a national symposium, academics and practitioners involved in promoting effective emergency response information systems provided validation for the architecture and next steps for enhancing emergency response information systems. Normative architecture characteristics and expert perspectives from the symposium are integrated into a framework that offers an enterprise approach for delivering time-critical emergency response services. This article provides recommendations for navigating toward a more incremental approach in developing enterprise-oriented emergency information services and examines future trends involving the application of normative architectural concepts to real-world emergency medical settings.