The three-member, interdisciplinary team of award winners initially wants to use a tablet to precisely document the deployment of emergency teams in the event of cardiovascular arrest. The aim is to improve the treatment and training of emergency teams in hospitals.
The award winners are Prof. Dr. Thomas Wurmb and Oliver Happel from the Emergency Medicine Section of the Clinic and Polyclinic for Anaesthesiology, ZOM Würzburg, and Dr. Tobias Grundgeiger, expert in psychological ergonomics at the Institute for Human-Computer-Media, Würzburg: "Every year, around 50,000 to 100,000 cardiovascular arrests occur in German hospitals. Patient safety can be increased here if the resuscitation guidelines are revised and patient care is improved through targeted measures. The use of new media makes this possible: a tablet-based app can identify improvements and make resuscitations more successful in future."
The Würzburg-based Vogel Foundation supports the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg in order to make top achievements in research visible through funding. This is done by means of an annual award, the "Research Promotion Prize of the Vogel Foundation Dr. Eckernkamp", which is organized by the University Association.
University President Prof. Dr. Alfred Forchel thanked the founder "for his outstanding commitment to promoting science and research at our alma mater" and wished the award winners every success in their research. David Brandstätter, Chairman of the University Association and Managing Director of Main-Post, referred to the great impact of the funding for Würzburg as a center of science.
Interview with the research team
An interdisciplinary research team from Würzburg is developing a tablet-based app designed to make emergency interventions in hospitals more effective and targeted.
Background: What is the likelihood of suffering a cardiac arrest during an inpatient stay in hospital and having to be resuscitated? Unfortunately, greater than you might initially think! It is estimated that an emergency event occurs in 2 to 5% of inpatient treatments in Germany. With an estimated 18 million patients per year, this figure is therefore between 360,000 and 900,000. Among this large number of different emergency events, it is estimated that around 50,000 to 100,000 cardiovascular arrests occur in hospitals. The successful research project therefore has the potential to help save many lives.
1. to what extent is the research project interdisciplinary?
When treating emergencies, it is not only medicine that is important, but human behavior and the interaction between people and technology also play a central role. Our team therefore consists of experts from the field of human-technology interaction with a background in psychology and emergency medicine.
2. What exactly does the app you have developed do?
During emergency interventions, the treatment team operates in a special risk area of medicine. Here, precisely timed measures and their chronology are of great importance for the treatment outcome. This is a major and as yet unsolved problem in emergency care: Emergency care is time-critical, dynamic and complex and the sense of time of the people involved is greatly altered. This is precisely where the app comes in. On the one hand, the use of the app enables precise documentation. On the other hand, the treating physicians are guided through the relevant treatment guidelines.
3. what do you want to achieve and what are the next steps?
By using the app, we hope to improve the quality of documentation. This is very important in order to gain insights into the opportunities for improving the quality of care. We also hope to achieve more precise timing of life-saving measures and thus improve patients' chances of survival.
Further information and contact at: psyergo.uni-wuerzburg.de
www.vogel-stiftung.de and www.unibund.uni-wuerzburg.de
The Vogel Foundation Dr. Eckernkamp was founded in 2000 by the Würzburg publisher Dr. Kurt Eckernkamp and his wife Nina Eckernkamp-Vogel. The foundation focuses its support on four fields: Education, science, healthcare and culture. Dr. Eckernkamp is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the long-established German specialist media company Vogel Medien Gruppe, based in Würzburg.
