While emergency medical care has a critical role in assisting casualties after security incidents, there are a number of challenges that the Emergency Medical System (EMS) needs to address. These challenges include:
- A fragmented chain of actors responding to security-related incidents
- A lack of communication between practitioners and suppliers
- New threats to respond to (e.g., terrorism, armed conflicts)
- No common methodologies and standardized actions
The EU-funded project NO-FEAR tackle the emerging threats, security issues and social changes in the EU emergency medical care.
In doing so the NO-FEAR project brings together two main networks:
1) a practitioners, decision and policy makers network, and
2) a suppliers and academia network, so as to enhance the response to security-related incidents.
Within NO-FEAR, Trilateral Research leads the development of the communication and exploitation of the project to raise awareness and maximise its impact.
Foresight Exercise for emergency responders
On 26-28 November 2018, the NO-FEAR consortium hosted the project’s first networking event, a foresight exercise designed to frame the project vision and activities over the next five years. The foresight exercise, hosted by partner Nice-Sophia Antipolis University (UNS), took place in Nice (France) and brought together 53 participants, from over 15 countries, including non-medical, paramedical and medical first responders, medical practitioners, and representatives from industry, SMEs, research and other H2020 projects.
“The foresight exercise will support the NO-FEAR project’s ongoing and future activities to address the immediate, mid-to-long term paradigms and trends related to dilemmas of new emerging threats, security issues, and societal changes in EU emergency medical care.”, says Morgan Abily from UNS who organised the event.
The Foresight Exercise included a combination of working sessions, panel discussions, and presentations to provide participants with the opportunity to consider and reflect on the immediate, and mid-to-long term trends that have the potential to impact EU emergency medical care.
The first day of the exercise saw participants working together in groups of diverse stakeholders during six exercises focusing on horizon scanning to identify trends, historical analysis and trend analysis.
The second day included a round table on the lessons learnt from recent security-related events in the EU (e.g., terrorist attacks in France) and participants working together on a futures analysis to identify and examine the most pertinent trends.
Foreseeing and weighting the impact of the different trends will enable the consortium to work with stakeholders to prepare for and anticipate the changes expected in EU emergency medical care in the coming years. These will be considered in relation to the project’s three main thematic pillars:
1) acute care of the patient,
2) acute care operations in security-related incidents, and
3) training and education of personnel and volunteers.
Trends impacting EU emergency medical care
During the trend analysis working sessions, participants identified many trends of high importance for emergency medical systems and critical care. The identified trends include:
- Increased need and demand for psychological support
- An ageing population
- 5G
- Violence against medical personnel
- The growth of artificial intelligence applications
- New technologies and big data
- Government instability
- Social media
- E-health services
- More frequent large-scale attacks
Based on the findings of the foresight exercise, a strategy has been designed to follow up on the evolution of the trends over the next five years.
Future developments
The next NO-FEAR networking event will take place in April 2019 in Madrid and will involve an analysis of the lessons learnt and gaps identified from recent security incidents in Europe.
For further information on the project, please visit the NO-FEAR project page.
For information about joining one of the NO-FEAR networks, please e-mail info@no-fearproject.eu.
For more information on our work in this research area please contact our team
