The 5th International Conference on Current and Future Trends of Information and Communication Technologies in Healthcare (ICTH), 28-30.09.15

1. Smart Augmented Fields
for Emergency Operations
P. Brunetti, A. Croatti, A. Ricci, M. Viroli
{p.brunetti, a.croatti, a.ricci, mirko.viroli}@unibo.it
Alma Mater Studiorum — University of Bologna
Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DISI)
via Sacchi 3, Cesena, Italy
ICTH 2015 – Berlin, Germany
28.09.2015
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 1 / 17

2. Outline
1 Healthcare Emergency Scenarios and Software
Main Features
State of the Art
Introduction to SAFE approach
2 Augmented Field Idea
Concept and Functionalities
AF Middleware
3 SAFE description
Scenarios and Features
Prototype
4 Conclusions and Future Work
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 2 / 17

3. Healthcare Emergency Scenarios and Software Main Features
Healthcare Emergency Scenario
In case of disaster. . .
only a limited number of resources it is available,
an efficient coordination of the work of rescuers is required,
first-aid treatments to involved people must be carried out rapidly,
rescuers have to evaluate the health status of each victim (triage),
carrying out some basic medical treatments if need,
teams should act cooperatively,
. . .
⇒ Healthcare emergency scenarios are not simple to manage!
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 3 / 17

4. Healthcare Emergency Scenarios and Software State of the Art
State of the Art
Several software systems for emergency management were proposed
to:
automatize triage procedures, with smart devices able to guide
rescuer’s actions,
reducing the amount of time need to perform each procedure,
reducing the amount of skills and abilities requested to rescuers.
Main Remarks
1 Mostly focused on single rescuer and not on teams,
2 Hands-free requirement has not been properly considered.
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 4 / 17

5. Healthcare Emergency Scenarios and Software Introduction to SAFE approach
SAFE, in a nutshell
Smart Augmented Field for Emergency
Software system for supporting the work of teams involved in
emergency/rescue scenarios.
integration of wearable computing approach, augmented reality
technologies and intelligent agents (multi-agents systems)
Designed upon the Augmented Field middleware (AF).
Exploits AF services for:
1 improving the effectiveness of the actions of individual rescuers,
2 improving their interaction and coordination with other team members,
3 providing a kind of smart remote control and observation for the
ongoing mission.
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 5 / 17

6. Healthcare Emergency Scenarios and Software Introduction to SAFE approach
SAFE, in a nutshell
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 6 / 17

7. Augmented Field Idea Concept and Functionalities
Augmented Field Concept
A digital (virtual) layer running on top of some physical environment (part
of a city, a building, a room, . . . ), augmenting it with a dynamic set of
situated information and computational resources (augmented entities).
Augmented Entities
full-fledged computational objects, encapsulating state and behavior,
situated entities, anchored either to some geographical position or
objects in the physical environment,
perceivable by humans, equipped with suitable devices.
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 7 / 17

8. Augmented Field Idea Concept and Functionalities
Functionalities
AF’s goal
Make easier the development and the execution of real-time collaborative
applications to support teams engaged in some missions taking place on
the physical environment.
Capability empowering
extending and integrating perceptions and functions of operators,
improve reactivity,
make the decision making process more effective.
Context awareness and sharing
Implicit communication and coordination
through spatial traces and messages placed on the (digital) field.
Mission tracking, Monitoring and Analysis
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 8 / 17

9. Augmented Field Idea AF Middleware
Programming Abstractions
AF can be conceived as an OS/platform offering a support for its
applications based on some main concepts/abstractions.
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 9 / 17

10. Augmented Field Idea AF Middleware
AF Middleware Architecture
The role of the middleware is to provide an adequate abstraction to
allow interoperability to the internal entities.
Part of AF is distributed as a set of APIs.
Smart
Agents
Management
Interface
External
Interface
AF API
Field View
(Smart-Map)
Patient Smart Controllers
AF API
Sensor
drivers
Internal Controllers
AF API
User Assistant
Agents
AR View
Observable
Domain
OPERATOR CONTROL ROOM TAG
Operational APIs
Event
Receiver
Resource
Manager
Sync Module
Communication Adapter
Resources Rules
Resource
Observer AgentsEvent
Dispatcher
Topic Collector
AF
Middleware
Event
Management
Layer
Health
Dataspace
Mission Smart
Controller Agents
SAFE
Application
Environment I/O Interface
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 10 / 17

11. SAFE description Scenarios and Features
SAFE main features (1/2)
Rescuer’s actions are assisted by smart agents that take advantage of
context data provided by the AF middleware.
to guide and to make easier rescuer tasks completion through an
augmented reality based interface,
rescuers equipped with a mobile wearable AR-Device to allow the
coupling of information to the current real field of view.
At the identification time of a victim involved in disaster a wearable
computational device (tag) can be associated to the patient to
monitor vital signs and autonomously communicate the data flow.
During missions, operators are able to exploit cooperation and smart
interaction capabilities supported as building-blocks of AF middleware.
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 11 / 17

12. SAFE description Scenarios and Features
SAFE main features (2/2)
Mission requirements about collaboration and cooperation are
reinforced and supported by the Control Room entity.
acts as a management node,
has mission overall perspective, including state of operators and victims
and related locations,
through an interactive map is available the real-time tracking of
mission entities.
Control Room offers functionalities to:
interact directly or indirectly with mission entities,
receive feedback from them,
release virtual information on field, perceivable by operators.
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 12 / 17

13. SAFE description Prototype
SAFE Prototype
A first implementation of SAFE based on mainstream technologies.
Java, Android, REST, RabbitMQ, HTML5, . . .
A first attempt to evaluate the AF concept and architecture.
Only some features have been implemented
. . . lot of work is still to be done!
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 13 / 17

14. SAFE description Prototype
Prototype – Operator System
Operators equipped with Epson
Moverio BT-200 AR-Glasses.
Propose an innovative
see-through view for the system
through the superimposing of
dynamic information in an
unobtrusive way to the
current field-of-view.
Inputs to the system are
(currently) submitted through a
smartphone.
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 14 / 17

15. SAFE description Prototype
Prototype – Control Room System
Available as an intrinsic
distributed system, based on
standard web technologies.
The application is able to
receive and elaborate warning
alarms from field entities, based
on a set of rules.
Provides a wrapper of AF
functionalities to send and
receive messages and data
to/from operators and tags.
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 15 / 17

16. Conclusions and Future Work
Conclusions
The main goal of SAFE is to related to empower rescue mission on
emergency scenarios
providing an innovative tool/system based on the concept of the
Augmented Field (AF).
The proposed solution must be primarily seen as a first design
experiment:
1 to find an unified system model that characterize these type of
systems, and
2 to exploit an integration of many mainstream technologies to realize an
innovative software system for the healthcare field.
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 16 / 17

17. Smart Augmented Fields
for Emergency Operations
P. Brunetti, A. Croatti, A. Ricci, M. Viroli
{p.brunetti, a.croatti, a.ricci, mirko.viroli}@unibo.it
Alma Mater Studiorum — University of Bologna
Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DISI)
via Sacchi 3, Cesena, Italy
ICTH 2015 – Berlin, Germany
28.09.2015
A. Croatti (UNIBO) SAFE ICTH ’15 17 / 17