Innovative system for 118 emergency service operators: REC-VISIO 118 trials in Garfagnana before the end of the year, as part of the Proximity Care project activities
The meeting with the mayors of the inland areas to illustrate the potential of remote medical support, in the initiative of the project, developed by the Sant'Anna School and supported by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca for the internal areas of the province
Before the end of the year, the REC-VISIO 118 system, developed by the Institute of Telecommunications, Informatics and Photonics (TeCIP) and TIME srl, will be adopted in the Garfagnana area, which covers areas between the Alpi Apuane and Versilia, to provide medical support to operators of the 118 Emergency-Urgency service, enabling the doctor at the Operations Centre to view the patient remotely as if he or she were present at the scene of the emergency.
To illustrate the start of the experimentation of the REC-VISIO 118 system, a meeting was held on 23 October in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, between the team of professors and researchers from the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna belonging to the Interdisciplinary Health Science Centre and the Institute of Telecommunications, Informatics and Photonics (TeCIP) and the mayors of the municipalities of Garfagnana, in an initiative of the Proximity Care project, developed by the Sant'Anna School and supported by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca for the internal areas of the province, and coordinated by the Interdisciplinary Centre.
The REC-VISIO 118 system
The REC-VISIO 118 system, which grew out of the results of an R&D Project co-financed by Regione Toscana, on the POR RSI call, and developed by the Scuola Sant'Anna under the coordination of Piero Castoldi, Professor of Telecommunications at the INRETE Laboratory of the TeCIP Institute, consists of a helmet that can be worn by operators (nurses, volunteers and doctors) at the scene of the intervention. It is also equipped with a video camera that simultaneously transmits the video of the patient to be assisted to the doctor at the Operations Centre, which can be viewed via a specially developed application.
This service is particularly useful in Garfagnana, where the distribution of the population in a large mountainous area makes the travel time to reach emergency patients and to transport them to the most appropriate medical centre statistically among the longest in Tuscany.
Remote medical tutoring plays a central role especially for time-dependent pathologies (stroke, acute respiratory failure, heart attack), for which the rapidity of diagnosis and the consequent administration of the most appropriate therapy is decisive for the survival of the patient and for the effectiveness of the care he or she will receive at the hospital.
In the mountainous areas of Garfagnana, where the morphological conformation of the territory makes rescue operations complex, indeed, the study of innovative solutions is a natural, obligatory step.
Cover: Piero Castoldi, Director of the TeCIP Institute and scientific head of the REC-VISIO Project for the Sant'Anna School, wears the REC-VISIO 118 system.
Gallery: some pictures of the helmet and researchers Anna Lina Ruscelli and Alessandro Pacini.
