Live on-scene video to improve HEMS care

Thames Valley and Chiltern Air Ambulance (TVAA) has reported that Dr Syed Masud, clinical governance lead for the UK HEMS charity, has been working in close collaboration with its medical partner South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) and local hospitals to introduce real-time visualisation. TVAA said its crews are now equipped with live-streaming cameras when they are sent to incidents, enabling them to share information with senior clinicians based in hospital and with the SCAS ambulance service co-ordination centre whilst at the scene.

Masud, who is also a consultant in emergency medicine and pre-hospital medicine and a senior lecturer in trauma and pre-hospital emergency medicine at Oxford University, said: “When senior clinicians are being asked by staff at the scene of a medical emergency or major trauma for advice, those clinicians can now see live footage of what is happening. This not only saves valuable time – and in the life-threatening emergencies that air ambulance crews are sent to, every second counts – but also means more accurate advice can be given because the actual patient or incident can be seen, which improves the already high quality of care provided still further.”

The live camera footage also has a number of other benefits, stressed TVAA, including: working as a training aid for doctors and paramedics joining the service; to enable staff to review cases to ensure best practice can be embedded across the air ambulance service; helping to prevent HEMS staff from being interrupted by staff from the clinical co-ordination centre as they are performing critical, clinical procedures; allowing HEMS desk staff to proactively pre-order key supplies, such as blood or plasma packs, if they can see stocks being used at an incident so the air ambulance is ready sooner for the next mission.

With regard to data security, TVAA said: “The Real Time Visualisation project has been subject to rigorous testing to ensure it conforms to SCAS IT governance requirements. The camera streams information live to the HEMS Desk in the clinical coordination centre and all footage is stored on secure, encrypted SCAS servers – not on the camera itself.