News

Care & Rescue has been a research area at SAFER since 2014. The focus has been to collaborate on care after an accident has occurred and conduct research on how you should act to best handle the situation for everyone involved, so that lives are saved and injuries are minimal. In order to further increase the involvement and include other partners, who traditionally do not focus on traffic and vehicle safety, Lindholmen’s Prehospital ICT Arena, PICTA, together with SAFER, is engaging in post-crash as a new focus area.

Focus on prehospital medical care
PICTA is a neutral, open arena for research and innovation in prehospital medical care. Because PICTA focuses on eHealth/ICT to promote prehospital healthcare all the way from detection of the incident, via emergency calls and prioritizing, to the right level of care at the right place, post-crash is a natural fit within these activities. PICTA’s knowledge and network helps SAFER better handle these issues within the broader area of road safety.

“The Research area's development has been positive over the years, but we believe that the new location as a focus area within PICTA will make the project portfolio considerably stronger at PICTA, since we will reach and involve a larger number of actors who are involved in the healthcare chain”, says Magnus Granström, SAFER's Director.

SAFER’s partners will still be able to collaborate and participate in projects related to Care and Rescue, but this will happen within the framework of PICTA. The meeting structure will follow SAFER’s Research area days, but the projects will formally belong to PICTA.

Large potential to save lives with right care
Research suggests that two-thirds of those who die in crashes do so within the first hour, but also that up to one-third of deaths can be prevented if the right action is taken quickly. WHO considers post-crash one of the five pillars to be addressed within “The Decade of Action for Road Safety,” which highlights just how much there is to be done in this area.  

There are already projects underway at PICTA related to post-crash, for example around clinical decision-making support in connection with trauma and more efficient incident assessment and prioritizing. Through cooperation, different initiatives to jointly develop the area can be better realized.
 

“This is an area we can develop and do a lot of good in by utilizing and improving the activities and research surrounding, for example, trauma, at Chalmers and MedTech West,” says Bengt Arne Sjöqvist, Project Manager for PICTA at Lindholmen Science Park.

About PICTA
The arena is run by Lindholmen Science Park in cooperation with some 30 organizations in healthcare services, industry and academy. The aim is to remove the obstacles that prevent IT and eHealth from being utilized and developed to their full potential in, for example, ambulance medical care.
Through shared projects, knowledge dissemination and research, we want to ensure that IT and eHealth are used in the best possible manner in healthcare services. Prehospital ICT Arena works with the entire healthcare chain, from someone needing help until the patient has received the correct treatment. It could be that the patient is taken to hospital, transferred to primary healthcare or able to remain home.
The arena is financed by Västra Götaland Region and efforts from the arena’s stakeholders.