Adopting Technological Innovations to Enhance Disaster Event Response

Abstract

The convergence of medical and technological developments has continued to transform the delivery of medical care in disaster environments, incorporating advances from telecommunications to physiologic monitoring, artificial intelligence, and computer vision. However, unless the interconnected nature of these developments is conceptualized with a proper framework, there is a risk of overlooking applications, developing silos, and limiting interoperability between innovations. To develop such a framework, this piece integrated a review of current literature, expert insights, and global market trends to propose 4 categories of innovations: (1) Enabling Technologies, (2) Signal Acquisition, (3) Data Utilization, and (4) Applications. Applications can be further subdivided into 4 use cases: (1) Disease and Injury Surveillance and Detection, (2) Population Protection, (3) Responder Protection, and (4) Disease and Injury Management. Practitioners, policymakers, and private sector counterparts can utilize this framework to change their clinical practices, allocate funds in a stepwise fashion, or prioritize development projects, respectively.