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Review
. 2023 Oct 23;13(5):1266-1285.
doi: 10.3390/clinpract13050114.

Clinical Research in Prehospital Care: Current and Future Challenges

Jonathan Cimino  1   2 , Claude Braun  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Clinical Research in Prehospital Care: Current and Future Challenges

Jonathan Cimino et al. Clin Pract. .

Abstract

Prehospital care plays a critical role in improving patient outcomes, particularly in cases of time-sensitive emergencies such as trauma, cardiac failure, stroke, bleeding, breathing difficulties, systemic infections, etc. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in clinical research in prehospital care, and several challenges and opportunities have emerged. There is an urgent need to adapt clinical research methodology to a context of prehospital care. At the same time, there are many barriers in prehospital research due to the complex context, posing unique challenges for research, development, and evaluation. Among these, this review allows the highlighting of limited resources and infrastructure, ethical and regulatory considerations, time constraints, privacy, safety concerns, data collection and analysis, selection of a homogeneous study group, etc. The analysis of the literature also highlights solutions such as strong collaboration between emergency medical services (EMS) and hospital care, use of (mobile) health technologies and artificial intelligence, use of standardized protocols and guidelines, etc. Overall, the purpose of this narrative review is to examine the current state of clinical research in prehospital care and identify gaps in knowledge, including the challenges and opportunities for future research.

Keywords: clinical research; emergency medical services; prehospital care; research methodology and infrastructure.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Feasibility criteria needed for the development and success of a clinical research project in prehospital care.
Figure 2
Figure 2
EMS and hospital care research activities: balance between challenges (red) and opportunities (green).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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