Emergency department situational and tactical awareness tool

1. Background: The current heightened awareness of threats to national security from natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and epidemic illness underscores the importance of situational awareness of emergency department (ED) stress and strain as a critical indicator of preparedness and response capabilities.

2. Objective: The Emergency Department Situational and Tactical Awareness Tool (ED-STAT) is a federally sponsored proof of concept data platform that has been engineered from the ground-up to deliver an aggregation of real-time hospital and other ED situational data in an easy-to-understand, internet-accessed interface.

3. Methods: The ED-STAT leverages the latest database, web, and information technologies, all of which have been architected in distinct tiers (data, business, and presentation) to provide scalability, ease-of-maintenance, and the potential for rapid co-development by other teams and partners, some of whom may be geographically disparate.

4. Results: This project had revealed several key findings. First, there is a variety of distinct methods for accessing needed hospital administrative information (e.g. HL-7 messaging versions; non-HL-7, SQL-based data warehouses; etc.) and these require multiple interface capabilities beyond and distinct from current HL-7 interface technologies. Second, useful data elements may require integration, mathematical conversion, normalization, and transformation through formulae to become meaningful indicators. The ED-STAT can provide federal emergency planners and managers information on the stress and strain on specific ED during major emergency events. However, officials must be aware that private entities may not be willing or able to share data, even in the setting of a public health emergency; therefore, mitigation strategies must be developed and implemented early in the development process.

5. Conclusions: EDs can benefit from the ED-STAT as it allows hospital administrators and managers to review the status and preparedness and response capabilities of EDs. Furthermore, this project holds the potential to help the nation prepare for responding to national disasters.