University of Surrey - The SEE-IT Trial research study

Project background: What is a trauma incident?

A ‘trauma incident’ is when someone suffers serious injuries that may be life-changing, cause death or a long-term disability.

Trauma incidents are the biggest killer of people aged under 45 in the UK: most often, road traffic accidents. Following a trauma incident, most people will be taken to a hospital emergency department by an ambulance that has responded to a 999 call.

Ambulances usually attend an incident by road, but in serious cases, an air ambulance (helicopter) may be sent. The aim is to get the patient to the best hospital to treat their injuries without delay to improve their chances of survival, recovery from their injuries and minimise chances of long-term problems.

When a 999 call is made, the person in the ambulance service who answers (the call taker) usually asks the caller to describe what they can see and how serious the injuries appear. This is so the dispatcher can decide how urgently, and what type, of help is required (e.g. what ambulance support to send and whether a helicopter is needed).

The caller may give incomplete or wrong information, so sometimes too few or too many ambulances are sent. This can delay getting the right help to patients or mean that ambulances are not available for others who need them. It is also costly for the NHS if ambulances or helicopters are sent when not needed.

The GoodSAM system

This research dissemination film was used to publicise the results of a research study that used a system called GoodSAM livestreaming that allowed the dispatchers in the emergency operations centre to send a link in a text message to the smartphone of 999 callers.

When the caller clicked on the link, it used the camera on their phone to send live-streamed images to the dispatcher (without recording it). This let the dispatcher see what was happening at the scene, rather than just relying on information given by the caller.

The University of Surrey wanted to know if using this system would be more efficient and effective, and to make sure that it didn’t add to the stress of the dispatchers.

Creating the research output animation

Because we wanted to show whole scenes and how different elements within them interact with each other, in this research output animation, we used an Isometric projection view with lots of moving parts.

Post-launch

The University of Surrey was thrilled with this animation and has shown the film in lots of different forums and conferences to promote the next stage of the process.

Speaking to one of the original team, they let us know that they are planning to take the work forward to the next step and in particular, building in a research aim to work out how to mitigate the challenges they had in public recruitment.

We loved working with the University of Surrey on this important work and hope that this early success will lead directly to both lives and money being saved by emergency services all over the world!