East Anglian Air Ambulance hosts online conference next week

The East Anglian Air Ambulance (EAAA) will host its first research and development conference next week, focusing on pre-hospital emergency medicine (PHEM), in collaboration with medical technology manufacturer Zoll.

The online conference, entitled ‘Breaking Barriers: national data sets improving collaboration and outcomes in PHEM’ will take place on 19 November, and includes six hours of continuing professional development content supported by the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care, Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.

A broad range of speakers

The event will be hosted by EAAA’s clinical research and development group RAID (research, audit, innovation and development), led by RAID chair, Dr Rob Major.

The line-up also includes several guest speakers including Professor Tim Coats, Professor of Emergency Medicine at Leicester Royal Infirmary, who will be speaking about Trauma Audit & Research Network (TARN) data sets and PHEM; Dr Nicholas Crombie, Trauma Anaesthetist at QE Hospital Birmingham, who will conduct a presentation on pre-hospital blood products; and Dr Phil Hyde, Consultant Paediatric Intensivist at Southampton Children’s Hospital, who will be providing an overview of PHEMnet.

“Pulling this conference together has been a lot of hard work but we’re really, really excited about the calibre of speakers involved, the range of topics we will be covering and the number of delegates we’ve already get signed up, which shows that there is a lot of appetite within the industry for this type of conference,” said Dr Rob Major.

“We’re really proud of the work we’re already doing at EAAA through the RAID group and look forward to being able to showcase and share this as widely as possible, to evidence the impact of HEMS teams and improve patient outcomes and the level of care being delivered prehospital. Prehospital research and development is a very exciting space at the moment and we’re hoping to be able to make the RAID conference an annual event.”

EAAA has undergone a programme of expansion in recent years. In addition to the creation of the conference, the service also opened a new hangar at Cambridge City Airport in April 2021, and became the first helicopter emergency medical service in the East of England region to fly 24/7 in June.