Accident & Emergency Informatics and One Digital Health

Yearb Med Inform. 2022 Jun 2. doi: 10.1055/s-0042-1742506. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: Climate changes are the major challenge in public and individual health, as they modify the ecosystem and yield contagious diseases from animal to human. Furthermore, we notice the rapid development of elderly, changing the population demographic. These critical measures have imposed economical costs, require trained personnel, and reduce the healthcare systems' performances.

METHODS: COVID-19 pandemic showed that digital health paradigms such as m-health, telemedicine, and Internet of medical things (IoMT) should be further developed for such disasters. Quarantine was experienced frequently at different levels, which indicates the urgent need to develop smart medical homes for continuous monitoring of the patients. Human health, environment, and animals are the three interwoven aspects of public health that should be formulated under a conceptual and unified framework. Accident and Emergency Informatics (A&EI) considers the prediction and prevention of an individual's health in the long term and detects instant accidents and emergencies for further processes linking to hospital and rescue services for lowering the impact. One Digital Health (ODH) considers the health of the human, the animal, and the environment as a whole.

RESULTS & CONCLUSION: In this position paper, we discuss the mutual benefits of A&EI and ODH in disaster management. We outline the mission, current status of A&EI in healthcare, and summarize the most important development of A&EI-related scope in the other fields of science. We discuss developing smart environments to monitor environmental and animal aspects. Then we examine the use of the ODH framework for enhancing the A&EI capacities to deal with complex disasters. Moreover, we discuss the further development of the international standard accident number (ISAN) to include and link environmental and animal event related data. Besides, ODH will cope with the A&EI protocols and technical specifications to be part of A&EI in the application layer.

PMID:35654425 | DOI:10.1055/s-0042-1742506