Opioid overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the US. To respond to this public health crisis, public health and safety agencies are attempting to optimize their use of data sets that can identify opioid overdoses cases early in the continuum of emergency medical care. In this study, we are developing and validating a novel approach to identifying opioid overdose cases using a set of indicators from pre-hospital data, including the electronic patient care record (ePCR), call taking, and dispatch data. We queried all medical emergency calls in calendar year (CY) 2016 for a single...

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Although it makes up only about 1-2% of all emergency calls for help, sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) remains one of the most deadly—and one of the most hotly debated—topics in emergency services. Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMDs) can play a critical role in improving survival rates for victims of SCA. In order to provide the most timely, effective care, EMDs must first identify that an SCA is occurring, then move quickly to provide instructions for bystander CPR. To support the achievement of these twin goals, the American Heart Association (AHA) has recently released proposed standards for...

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