Background: The enjoyment of different walks of life of health care is one of the top priorities. To this end, access is a precondition for the establishment of justice in human societies. Given that keeping the health of some groups in societies is of special importance due to their special age-physical conditions, the present study aimed to investigate the access of children and adolescents u...

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this research was to determine the preparedness of emergency medical services (EMS) agencies in one US state to cope with a massive epidemic event. METHODS Data were collected primarily through telephone interviews with EMS officials throughout the State. To provide a comparison, nine out-of-state emergency services agencies were invited to participate. RESULTS E...

In addition to property damage and loss of lives, environment pollution, such as water pollution and air pollution caused by accidents in chemical industrial parks (CIPs) is a significant issue in China. An emergency response system (ERS) was therefore planned to properly and proactively cope with safety incidents including fire and explosions occurring in the CIPs in this study. Using a scenar...

PURPOSE This is an exploratory study of nursing home preparedness in South Carolina intended to: (1) examine nursing home administrators' perceptions of disaster preparedness in their facility in the absence of an immediate emergency or disaster, and changes in their views about preparedness following a large disaster; (2) study whether administrators' knowledge of shortcomings in preparedness ...

OBJECTIVE To determine if the effective use of Health Information Technologies (HIT) and the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) affects emergency department (ED) usage in a complicated frequently presenting patient population. METHODS A retrospective, observational study of 45 patients enrolled in our Frequent User Program called Community Resources for Emergency Department Overuse (CREDO) betwe...

Since the 9/11 terrorist incident, homeland security efforts and the readiness of local emergency management agencies have become focal points in the war on terrorism. A significant issue faced by front line responders has been the significant increase in the number and type of potential incidents they must be prepared to handle. This paper describes a simulation-based approach that allows loca...

Managing emergency situations in large buildings and underground structures could be simplified if at any time the positions of on-site emergency crews were available. In this paper a system is proposed which combines inertial measurements of moving persons with building floor plans tagged with information on semantics to achieve a novel level of robust indoor positioning. A speech driven user ...

A 56-year-old man receiving mechanical circulatory support via a biventricular assist device suffered an airway emergency secondary to bleeding into the airway. An improvised solution to gain control of the airway in the short term was devised, and an oxygenator was inserted into the circuit, providing an alternative means of gas exchange while definitive control of the airway was achieved. Thi...

Most of the current evacuation plans are based on static signaling, fixed monitoring infrastructure, and limited user notification and feedback mechanisms. These facts lead to lower situation awareness, in the case event of an emergency, such as blocked emergency exits, while delaying the reaction time of individuals. In this context, we introduce the E-Flow communication system, which improves...

In this paper we present a semi-formal tool using the concept of process modelling for emergency management developed within our project InfoStrom. This is meant to be an aid for rescue forces, energy providers and public authorities, whose measures and terminologies generally differentiate. Also, they do not have up-to-date documents and manuals available that could be adapted to new types of ...