Integrated modelling of medical emergency response process for improved coordination and decision support

Abstract

The medical emergency response comprises a domain with complex processes, encompassing multiple heterogeneous entities, from organisations involved in the response to human actors to key information sources. Due to the heterogeneity of the entities and the complexity of the domain, it is important to fully understand the individual processes in which the components are involved and their inter-operations, before attempting to design any technological tool for coordination and decision support. This work starts with the gluing together and visualisation of the interactions of involved entities into a conceptual model, along the identified five workspaces of emergency response. The modelling visualises the domain processes, in a way that reveals the necessary communication and coordination points, the required data sources and data flows, as well as the required decision support needs. Work continues with the identification and modelling of the event-driven discrete-time-based dynamics of the emergency response processes and their compositions, using Petri nets as the modelling technique. Subsequently, an integrated model of the process is presented, which facilitates the parallelisation of the tasks undertaken in an emergency incident.

Keywords: Petri nets; coordination modelling; data flows; data sources; decision making; decision support; emergency services; event-driven discrete-time-based dynamics; health care; medical emergency response process.

Fig. 1

Medical emergency response entities (legend: green tick describes component involves decision making and red tick describes component involves use of existing tools)

Fig. 2

Visual representation of the medical emergency response conceptual model

Fig. 3

Zooming into the conceptual model of the incident field workspace

Fig. 4

Representing the fast-tracking response activities for efficiency gains, from serial to parallel

Fig. 5

PN model of ‘sub-process 2: responding to incident calls/alerts’

Fig. 6

PN model of ‘sub-process 8: patient triage/tagging (Level 1)’

Fig. 7

Composition of sub-processes ‘bystander/volunteer actions’ and ‘responding to incident calls/alerts’

Fig. 8

Composite model: scenario enactment, step 1

Fig. 9

Composite model: scenario enactment, step 2

Fig. 10

Composite model: scenario enactment, step 3