Many organizations are involved in the delivery of medical emergency disaster services: emergency medical services (EMS), the fire and police departments, hospitals, local authorities, etc. Resource planning and logistic coordination among all these units is therefore very important to save lives and reduce costs. The need for better logistic coordination and communication systems has been documented, but the current IT infrastructure makes that difficult to achieve. Given the increased risk of natural and man-made disasters, it is paramount to offer better logistic solutions. In this Phase I SBIR we propose to develop a proof-of-concept prototype for a Medical Emergency Disaster Response Network (MEDRN). This network will allow planners to obtain rapid access to logistic/resource information and to distribute it to those that need to know. Over the last three years Semandex Networks has developed an XML based content-routing technology that reduces the number of """"""""information breaks"""""""" within an organization and across organizations by allowing information to flow from providers to users without requiring the parties to know one another. The system's overlay network topology permits a low cost implementation that makes use of existing infrastructure without altering it. Moreover, by allowing users to create queries that can be stored, reused and updated, the network can become a repository of standard operating procedures and best practices. The technology has been successfully trialed by the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. For Phase I of this SBIR, we plan to take advantage of our content-routing technology to implement the MEDRN prototype. We will a) analyze the system requirements, b) design the topology of the network, c) develop the prototype MEDRN, d) test the system under a simulated scenario and, e) evaluate the system. A successful Phase I will allow us to conduct an operational trial during Phase II with the involvement of a community. Our goal is for the MEDRN to aid medical emergency personnel to ultimately save lives.
