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Adopting Technological Innovations to Enhance Disaster Event Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2025

Ryan Michael Leone Open the ORCID record for Ryan Michael Leone [Opens in a new window] ,
Kaitlin Rainwater-Lovett  and
Dan Hanfling
Ryan Michael Leone*
Affiliation:
Columbia University, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY, USA National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, MD, USA
Kaitlin Rainwater-Lovett
Affiliation:
National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, MD, USA
Dan Hanfling
Affiliation:
The White House, Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response, Washington, DC, USA
*
Corresponding author: Ryan Michael Leone; Email: rml2207@cumc.columbia.edu
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Abstract

The convergence of medical and technological developments has continued to transform the delivery of medical care in disaster environments, incorporating advances from telecommunications to physiologic monitoring, artificial intelligence, and computer vision. However, unless the interconnected nature of these developments is conceptualized with a proper framework, there is a risk of overlooking applications, developing silos, and limiting interoperability between innovations. To develop such a framework, this piece integrated a review of current literature, expert insights, and global market trends to propose 4 categories of innovations: (1) Enabling Technologies, (2) Signal Acquisition, (3) Data Utilization, and (4) Applications. Applications can be further subdivided into 4 use cases: (1) Disease and Injury Surveillance and Detection, (2) Population Protection, (3) Responder Protection, and (4) Disease and Injury Management. Practitioners, policymakers, and private sector counterparts can utilize this framework to change their clinical practices, allocate funds in a stepwise fashion, or prioritize development projects, respectively.

Type
Concepts in Disaster Medicine
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 19 , 2025 , e32
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc

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Footnotes

Note: The authors used ChatGPT-4 to assist with the reformatting of citations to journal style.

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