Ontologies for Location Based Services Quality Enhancement: The Case of Emergency Services

Ontologies for Location Based Services Quality Enhancement: The Case of Emergency Services Linda Mhadhbi ∗ , Jalel Akaichi ∗ , Mohamed Hedi Karray † and Bernard Archimde † ∗ ISG-University of Tunis, Tunisia Email: [email protected] [email protected] † ENIT-University of Toulouse, France Email:[email protected] [email protected] Abstract—A good hea lth rescue sys tem is pri mar ily bas ed on a good eme rgenc y manage me nt. The refore , physi cia ns in gene ral and mobil e ones in parti cular have to rea ct pro mptly and efficiently to save human lives and help people with serious or life-threatening conditions especially if they are called to treat them far fro m medic al insti tutio ns. T aking effecti ve and swif t act ion s to re ach the pat ien t and /or the med ica l ins tit uti on in time may hel p to re duc e ser ious pr obl ems , and con se que ntl y improve the chances of patient cure and/or survival that present the primary concern of the physician. To overcome the emergency manag ement limits of nowa days, this paper propos e a medi cal assistance system based on ontologies that manage and exploit the large and rapidly growing volume of medical data in order to facilitate the on road decision making for the mobile physician. Thi s work, mor e than det er min ing the ne ar est health car e institution, answers to the physician needs to distinguish whether the clos est healt h car e insti tuti on hav e the nece ssar y medi cal resources (Equ ipmen ts, ser vices , staf f etc. ) and whet her thes e resources are available to fulfill the patient needs. Keywords: Mobile physician, Emergenc y management, On- tology, Continuous k-Nearest Neighbors, Location-based services I. I NTRODUCTION Over the last decade, worldwide, thousands of people die every year due to the inappropriate emergency management, the inadequate response and bad decisions made and poorly taken by rescue teams. Regardless what kinds of emergency we are talking about, they are all characterized by unexpectedness and waywardness. The need to enhance emergency management is bec oming pri mordial. In fa ct, a goo d hea lth res cue system is primarily based on a good emergency management. Therefore, physicians in general and mobile ones in particular ha ve to rea ct promptly and ef fici ent ly to sa ve human li ves and help people with serious or life- threa tenin g cond itions esp eci all y if the y are calle d to tre at the m far from me dic al insti tution s. T aking effect ive and swift actions to reach the patient and/or the health institution in time may help to reduce serious probl ems, and cons eque ntly impro ve the chances of patient cure and/or survival that present the primary concern of the physician. The lives and health of millions of people are affected by emergencies every day; therefore providing tools which assists mobile physician in managing emergency during critical and/ or urgent situations cases become a must. Indeed, technologies and software tools destined to improve emergency tasks per- forming are particularly interesting for their ability to address the growing information overload that clinicians face and to react promptly and efficiently when facing urgent hazards. Hence, in light of these facts and in order to facilitate the on road decision making for the mobile physician, this paper propo se an Ontol ogy-b ased medi cal assi stan ce system, that allows finding out as quickly as possible the needed medical resources and reserves the most suitable health care institutions according to the patient state. Specifically, this work answers the following three research questions: • How to localize rapidly the closets health care institu tion to the emergency scene? (1) • How to find out the neede d me dic al resources to dea l with the patient state? (2) • Doe s the localized hea lth car e ins tit uti on con tain the neces sary medical resourc es to fulfil the patie nt needs ? (3) The work will be or gan ized as follo ws: In sec tio n 1, we discuss firstly the problematic of emergency management then our proposed solution. In section 2, we present the previous works don e on emer gen cy ma nag ement, the emerg ing of mobi le communica tion tech nolog ies in healt h care field and then we specify with researches using ontologies. In section 3, we describe the main focus of the proposed medical support system and we depict in detail the architecture of our system to show its main functionalities. In section 4, we present the running phase especially the designed ontologies and we will discuss the obtained results. Finally, we conclude and outline the future directions of our work. II. PROBLEMATIC AND SOLUTION In a traditional emergency system, a regulator physician is in char ge of prov iding appropria te resp onses to emer genc y calls through an emergency hotline. He evaluates the medical emergency and decides whether it requires sending the rescue team to carry the patient to the closest medical care institution or not. Using this kind of traditional system can, obviously help to dete rmine roughly a medi cal instituti on; however it cannot help to predict the availability of the needed medical 90

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Ontologies for Location Based Services Quality Enhancement: The Case of Emergency Services