This week, the first Emergency Care Connect ambulance was presented in the Netherlands. This ambulance has a live video link to the Emergency Room (ER). This ensures better communication and cooperation between the ambulance team and the ER, improving emergency care in life-threatening situations.
The Emergency Care Connect ambulance was made possible through an intensive collaboration between Ambulance Amsterdam, Amsterdam UMC and KPN Health. “When a patient with a life-threatening condition is in the ambulance, on the way to the Emergency Department, you want all the care providers involved to be able to function as one team. In the current situation there is a hard cut in the care chain: only when the patient is transferred to the hospital does the emergency team get a full picture of the patient's condition,” says Lotte Terwindt, cardio-anesthesiologist at Amsterdam UMC and initiator of Spoedzorg Connect.
Better (digital) communication between ambulance and ER
Emergency Care Connect goes one step further. Thanks to a live video link, the ambulance team can allow the hospital's emergency team to watch the patient as they travel. This enables the reception team to better prepare for the patient's arrival. That, in turn, allows for faster takeover of treatment. Should the patient's condition change en route, the caregivers at the hospital are immediately aware of it via the live video link and immediately receive all crucial information about the patient.
“We want to bring acute care teams together earlier. In the ambulance on the way to the emergency room and in the emergency room itself, people are working under high pressure and decisions must be made quickly. It is nice if both care teams have the same understanding of the patients status,” says Dave Bouman, ambulance nurse Ambulance Amsterdam.
Evaluation and further roll-out
For this Service, the Emergency Care Connect ambulance is equipped with three discreet cameras and a monitor with microphone and speaker. The care professionals in the emergency room can therefore not only watch, but also consult in real time with the caregivers in the ambulance. The experiences gained there will be evaluated to determine if and how the Emergency Care Connect service can be further optimized. The goal is to roll out the service further, perhaps nationwide.
Solutions that enable a better connection and communication between the ER and ambulance services have already proven their added value for the care of urgent patients more than once. A good example from practice is the ambulances of the Zuid-Holland Zuid region that in 2021 started with digitally, called e-transfer, transferring patient information and status to the ER. This “real-time” e-transfer ensures that the ER knows earlier which patient is on the way and what is going on with him or her so that doctors and nurses can make better preparations.
