A Novel Approach For Supporting Care Coordination Across Distributed Emergency Care Teams

Effective care coordination between EMS and hospital teams is essential for timely, safe, and patient-centered care, particularly for emergency patients in critical, time-sensitive situations. Traditional communication tools like radios and phones often lead to delays, miscommunication, and inefficiencies. Moreover, EMS providers must keep their hands and eyes on the patient, making handheld devices impractical and increasing the risk of cross-contamination. To address these challenges, researchers designed, developed, and evaluated a hands-free communication system that integrates seamlessly into EMS workflows.

Researchers created a smart glasses prototype for EMS providers and a complementary web-based system for hospital-based emergency physicians. Together, these tools supported real-time communication, coordination, and clinical task performance during prehospital care. Smart glasses—head-mounted, wearable devices with transparent displays and built-in video cameras—offered EMS providers with a hands-free, situationally responsive platform for live streaming and video calling to the hospital system. They also featured voice commands and hand gestures designed to reduce workflow disruption and contamination risk.

The specific aims of the research were as follows:

• Design and develop technologies that support real-time prehospital care coordination.
• Evaluate the impact of technology solutions on prehospital care coordination.

Researchers employed a user-centered, iterative design approach, including participatory design workshops, rapid prototyping, and usability testing, with EMS providers and Emergency Department physicians from multiple sites. They refined the smart glass and telemedicine platform prototypes based on user feedback, then evaluated them through high-fidelity simulations. Researchers measured task completion, communication efficiency, and user experience using objective metrics, surveys, interviews, and eye-tracking data.

This study marks a significant advancement over traditional prehospital communication methods by developing and evaluating a novel wearable smart glasses system with unobtrusive, hands-free interaction. The integrated smart glasses and telemedicine solution features live video streaming captured by EMS providers, along with video calling and real-time sharing of patient data such as photos, demographics, treatments, and vital signs from EMS providers to hospital physicians. This enabled hospital-based physicians to better interpret field conditions. This direct visual insight into the patient’s condition, care activities, and surroundings supported safer, more effective care, while EMS providers completed more required clinical tasks and experienced potentially lower cognitive and physical workload. Despite some challenges with workflow integration and extended call durations, the system improved real-time communication and shared decision-making and was well received. These findings, disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations, pave the way for further refinement and broader adoption of wearable systems to improve outcomes in emergency and critical care.