Optimizing strategies for emergencies vehicles intervention by means of telemedicine: The TELESAL proof of concept

The availability, which will consistently grow in the near future, of satellite broadband communications services and technologies suitable to provide high speed data transmission to vehicles, make affordable and viable new concepts for the coordination of interventions of emergency vehicles such as ambulances. Within this context a great contribution to an efficient management of the resources, both human and infrastructural, involved in the handling of emergency situations can be provided by telemedicine. In fact thanks to the capability to bring “into the field” specific competencies and know how otherwise available only on distant health structures (hospitals, etc.), the ITC technologies applied to medicine can give a significant help to promptly identify and trigger the most suitable procedures to handle the emergency. This paper will analyze the requirements and strategies that the modern medical health care practices pose on telecommunications equipments and services and how those requirements can be met by the technologies which are already available or that will be available in the near future. Finally the in-the-field experience gained within the framework of the ASI co-founded telemedicine project TELESAL, where an ambulance of the Basilicata Soccorso fleet has been equipped with all the ITC equipments required to make use of telemedicine services, will be described.