nteroperability in Disaster Medicine and Emergency Management

Abstract

Accurate and timely information is critical for health early warning and effective emergency management. Health Information Technology (HIT) standards address the challenge of integrating information from disparate healthcare resources e.g. devices, people, and information systems to support not only the effective handling of emergencies, but also their analysis for long-term resource planning. In the management of emergencies, co-operative use of standards facilitates effective sharing of information among the parties involved in search and rescue, continuous disaster assessment, and public awareness. This paper discusses the cooperative use of interoperability standards from Health Level Seven (HL7), the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), and other Standards Developing Organizations to harness the power of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in emergency preparedness and response. The paper reports on the experience gained from the deployment of ICT in the Satellites for Epidemiology and health early warning (SAFE) civil protection exercise and interoperability considerations in technical solutions to be deployed in the “POSEIDON” exercise (earthquake followed by tsunami in the Mediterranean) still at the planning stage.