A huge thanks to Alistair Norman works, AIMTech, Leeds University Business School and Dr David Allen and Professor Tom Wilson.for the bulk of ideas in this proposal. See the original piece here.

The Fire and Rescue Services provide a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year service to all areas of the country, attending thousands of incidents a year. Given the scale of these organisations, the pressures they work under, and the complex information needs they have in doing their jobs, you can see how mobile technologies could help improve efficiency and increase flexibility.

Ambulances are using remote telemetry on in-vehicle tablets to give heart patients hospital standard care within a couple of minutes of arriving at a remote rural location. Previously, as a worst case it could take up to an hour to reach a coronary care unit. Fire Officers can get details of an incident, including maps, chemicals data and wind speed sent directly to terminals in their car or Fire appliance. They can even have the terminal read it to them if they are alone in the vehicle. They used to have to get all of this from separate paper files or by radioing back to a busy control centre for each piece of information they needed. This means that officer gets what they want, when they want it, the intermediate stage being eliminated.

So, there are lots of emergency services using mobile technologies to deliver real benefits for their staff, and for the public they serve. Fire Crews can attend incidents faster, despite often poor address data from callers, using satellite navigation, and are better prepared when they get there. This is because important information such as local hazards and the possible presence of chemicals onsite.

A major issue however is the problem of delivering the most relevant information in the most intelligent manner givn the restrictions of any mobile device with limited battery and screen size....

If we are dealing with policing or hospitals then we have to be utterly cautious in how we treat the information as much will be is sensitive and some of it is classified ....so putting it in a Word document on an SD card may not be the best idea in the world.

Situations develop and unfold rapidly, so information may have to be provided in very small and easy assimilable chunks, maybe in a speeding ambulance en route to an emergency for example. Situations often put users in the emergency services under extreme pressure never the best situation in which to take on board new information and one where we may not make the best decisions we can unless supported effectively. Conditions are often not ideal so screens need to work at night, while walking and in many other contexts. And devices themselves need to be rugged enough to support this although fully ‘ruggedised’ kit is not needed as often as you might think. Information can be highly dynamic and so may need to be updated frequently or in real time. Where that happens (or where security dictates that information cannot be held on the device) then there are issues about which bearer to use.

This project will focus on developing a prototype system for the fire service or medical personnel to use in emergency situations in the field. It will also focus on the methodology behind designing such systems.

Please visit the Zypad Wrist computer page for detailed descriptions of the device you will be developing these systems for.