Finding Comfortable Routes for Ambulance Transfers of Newborn Infants

Partridge, Tom J.; Morris, David E.; Light, Roger A.; Leslie, Andrew; Sharkey, Don; Crowe, John A.; McNally, Donal S.

Abstract

Early inter-hospital ambulance transport of premature babies is associated with more severe brain injury. The mechanism is unclear, but they are exposed to excessive noise and vibration. Smart-routing may help minimise these exposure levels and potentially improve outcomes. An app for Android smartphones was developed to collect vibration, noise and location data during ambulance journeys. Four smartphones, with the app installed, were provided to the local neonatal transport group to attach to their incubator trolleys. An example of route comparison was performed on the roads used between Nottingham City Hospital (NCH) and Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI). Almost 1,700 journeys were recorded over the space of a year. 39 of these journeys travelled from NCH to LRI, comprising of 9 different routes. Analysis was performed on all recorded data which travelled along each road. For routes from NCH to LRI, the route with least vibration was also the quickest. Noise levels, however, were found to increase with vehicle speed. Ambulance drivers in the study did not tend to take the quickest, smoothest or quietest route. Android smartphones are a practical method of gathering information about the in-ambulance environment. Routes were found to vary in vibration, noise and speed, suggesting these could be minimised. The next step is to combine recorded and clinical data to try and define an ideal neonatal comfort metric which can then be fed into the routing. Roll-out of the app around the UK is also planned.

Citation

Partridge, T. J., Morris, D. E., Light, R. A., Leslie, A., Sharkey, D., Crowe, J. A., & McNally, D. S. (2020). Finding Comfortable Routes for Ambulance Transfers of Newborn Infants. In 2020 42nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC). https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC44109.2020.9175873

• Conference Name: 2020 42nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) in conjunction with the 43rd Annual Conference of the Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Society
• Conference Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
• Start Date: Jul 20, 2020
• End Date: Jul 24, 2020
• Acceptance Date: Apr 10, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Aug 27, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-07
• Deposit Date: May 21, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 31, 2020
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Series ISSN: 2694-0604
• Book Title: 2020 42nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC)
• ISBN: 978-1-7281-1991-5
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC44109.2020.9175873
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4481125
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9175873
• Related Public URLs: https://embc.embs.org/2020/