Mobile Agents in Healthcare, a Distributed Intelligence Approach - Computational Intelligence in Healthcare: Advanced Methodologies - page 68

deals with the tasks comprised from the triage of the victims at the emergency scene to
the reservation of the resources needed at the hospital where the victims are transferred.
Let's suppose a scenario with many casualties caused by a large scale emergency, and
with the victims spread over a large area. Doctors, caregivers and triage personnel are
equipped with identification reflective vests. In addition, triage personnel (staff, from
now on) is equipped with bandoliers integrating a PDA, with touch screen tied to an
arm, and an additional high capacity battery. This PDA includes a GPS and a RFID
reader. The bandoliers contain pockets with first aid equipment to facilitate the task of
the emergency personnel, including electronic triage tags, later explained.
When a victim is found, he is labeled with an electronic triage tag, that is composed
of a traditional paper triage tag along with a conventional RFID tag that provides the
ability to be digitally identified. In this way, reading the RFID tag a unique identifier
is obtained to uniquely identify the victim within the emergency. Before labeling the
victim, the staff shall approach the electronic triage tag to the PDA that read the in-
corporated RFID. Then a software wizard to help staff to assess the state of the victim
(Figure 7) is activated.
This software provides all the steps required to follow the START protocol (breath-
ing, pulse, responds to simple questions, etc.) and perform the triage (Figure 8).
The software interface of the wizard (Figure 7) is simple, with intuitive icons, short
and understandable text, and large buttons that facilitate the use of the touch screen.
Furthermore, its use is optimal for triage because it does not increase the time de-
voted to follow the START protocol (which must be as short as possible) and benefits
from the available data already digitized.
Once the process has been completed, a recommendation of status (color) for the
victim is suggested: green for MINOR) , yellow for DELAYED ,redfor IMMEDIATE ,
and black for DECEASED . This status can be accepted by the staff or may be changed
to another one that the staff considers more appropriate.
After selecting the state (color) of the victim, the software will read the GPS device
position where the staff, and therefore the victim, is at that time.
5.4.2 Mobile Agent Electronic Triage Tag
The mobile agent crated after the triage will include the status (color of the triage tag)
of the victim, the GPS position, the unique identifier of the triage tag, and the patient's
vital data (pulse, respiration, and so on).
This mobile agent will stay in the personnel PDAs waiting to arrive to the field hospi-
tal for, later, moving to the emergency control center system. During the travel from the
Zone 0 to the Zone 1, the mobile agent will try to get to the emergency control center
as fast as possible by jumping between the PDAs of the emergency personnel.
The decision of a mobile agent to jump or not to jump to a PDA of another staff or
to a computer of an ambulance will depend on the application level routing protocol
used by the mobile agent. The use of the TTR routing protocol (see Section 4.4.1) is
encouraged.
5.4.3 Additional Services
Apart from the routing service, staff PDAs may offer different specific services. For
example, in the event of a medical staff performing triage in Zone 0 is a specialist in any