Just spend ten minutes with first responders talking about their concerns – you can see the commitment blazing in their eyes!  Saving public lives and reducing suffering is their mission.

The problem we repeatedly encounter is that emergency response and disaster recovery teams lack critical resources for evidence-based field training.  Due to the dynamic mobile operating environment of responder teams, traditional simulation scenarios and manual data collection do not support advanced analytics or structured sharing of learnings.  Unobserved verbal and physical transfer events may lack clarity and degrade critical response time in the ‘golden hour’ of survivability.  Moreover, impacts from resource constraints are even more critical for volunteer responders.

The lack of resources is particularly acute for multi-team simulations, which tend to be complex and infrequent.  The resulting verbal debriefing misses opportunities for teams eager to improve their own safety, save more lives and stabilize disasters.  After hearing many similar stories over two years, I accepted the challenge of SMART Emergency Medical Teams Co-Director for 2016.   This open source NIST Global Cities collaboration conducts innovative multi-team simulations.  I’ve attended multiple EMS conventions and joined professional associations to understand responders’ challenges.

Gradually, I became convinced that responders need and deserve advanced analytics – in order to better serve the public good.  Together, we can help emergency responders improve team cohesion, situational awareness and personal safety decisions.  They truly deserve our support!