Smartglasses for the Triage of Casualties and the Identification of Hazardous Materials

Abstract

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) can be confronted with complex and challenging situations with many casualties that require special procedures and organizational structures. In order to keep control and records, incident commanders use paper-based notes, lists and forms. The increasing availability of smartglasses leads to the research question, whether they can support members of EMS and improve processes and efficiency. In this contribution, we describe use cases for smartglasses in emergency medicine, such as the triage in incidents with many casualties and the recognition of hazardous materials in accident contexts. We describe results from interviews with 10 members of EMS and civil protection units in Germany and from prototypical applications that have been developed and evaluated together with domain experts. The prototypical applications described in this contribution have shown promising results with respect to usability and acceptance.