Innovative technologies to transform and improve EMS

Description: EMS in an invaluable service, helping over 28 million people per year. Unfortunately, massive increases in demand without increases in funding or staffing, as well as increases in misuse, are making it increasingly difficult to provide timely and appropriate support to individuals in crisis. Despite technological advances, the overall experience of calling 9-1-1 remains unchanged: someone calls and with a medical issue and we send an ambulance with EMTs/paramedics and we transport them to the emergency department, even though 70% of transports are determined after the fact to be medically unnecessary. What if we could use new technologies to determine medical need before dispatch? What kinds of technology would that require? What could we do in a world where we could prioritize critical calls and provide alternate support to non-emergent calls? In this session, we discuss the evolution of EMS over time, the challenges of the current operating status, and ideas for how we can use innovative new technologies to transform and improve the EMS of the future.