Feasibility of Telemedicine Under Ambulance Station Conditions

Our aim is to evaluate the feasibility of telemedicine in context of medical service in an ambulance station and in a further step in context of civil defense situations. The conditions in those situations are different to the usual usage of telemedicine in context of emergency medical services (EMS) like the "Telenotarzt" in Aachen. The medical personnel who are performing the medical treatment in ambulance stations or civil defense situations are most volunteers and are ordinarily not as experienced and educated as professional medical personnel in EMS. In case of civil defense situations, the personnel also must deal with shortage in material which we are not going to simulate in our study. The study will be realized at each one ambulance station at four large-scale events. Every time there will be a telemedicine workspace with an EMS-physician educated in telemedicine who can be contacted by briefed and equipped medical personnel according to the "TeleSAN"-standard. The emergency personnel start the patient's treatment according to their known standards and decide on their own whether they want to contact the tele-EMS-physician or not. Before starting the tele-consultation, every patient must declare his consent to the tele-consultation, otherwise tele-consultation cannot be realized, and the patient needs to be treated according to common standards. Due to spatial proximity of the telemedicine workspace and the ambulance station, the tele-EMS-physician can also work as an EMS-physician in the ambulance station if necessary. As a hypothesis we declare that telemedicine is feasible in context of an ambulance station. To evaluate the feasibility, we use patient's medical protocols, observations and surveys.