In this session on analytics for community first response, Dr. Caroline Jagtenberg shares insights on the use of mathematical models for improving community first responder (CFR) systems.
In community first responder (CFR) systems, traditional emergency service response is augmented by a network of trained volunteers who are dispatched via an app. A central application of such systems is out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, where a very fast response is crucial. As volunteers may not always be willing to respond, their availability is a crucial stochastic element of the system. This raises questions like: how many volunteers to alert for one patient? Should we bother them all at once, or do we use built-in time delays and wait for the first few answers to come in? To ensure a certain target survival rate throughout the community, how many volunteers are needed, and from which locations should they be recruited?
These are all questions where mathematics can help. We dive deeper into the recruitment question by describing the presence of volunteers throughout a region in a mathematical model, which permits the computation of the response-time distribution of the first-arriving volunteer. This can be used to determine whether introducing a CFR system in a new region is worthwhile or can serve as a guide for additional recruitment in existing systems. Effective target areas for recruitment are not always obvious because volunteers recruited from one area may be found in various areas across the city depending on the time of day; we explicitly capture this issue.
The lunch seminar will take place in the 08A46 meeting room at IVM. You don't need to register, it's a free open-door event with lunch provided! For questions, you can send an email to the Cluster Coordinators Marleen de Ruiter (m.c.de.ruiter@vu.nl) or Sander Veraverbeke (s.s.n.veraverbeke@vu.nl).