Structured and Standardized Emergency Call Systems from an Automation Research Perspective

Medical emergencies require quick and appropriate responses from Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Neither oversupply nor undersupply are acceptable for reasons of patient safety and economic concerns. Nowadays, computer-based tools – emergency call or dispatch systems - support dispatch center operators in decision-making and documentation processes. The extent to which automation plays a role in this varies, especially between standardized and structured emergency call systems. Although both approaches have already been studied and deployed, insufficient attention has been paid to automation research findings in other (safety-critical) domains. In this paper, we fit emergency call systems into findings on safety-critical and human-centered automation research. Furthermore, we outline research and development needs with respect to holistic call-taking and dispatching process views as well as adaptive automation. We conclude that human-machine cooperation by better structuring of emergency call systems might be preferable to further standardization resulting in full automation.