Locating and categorizing causes of discomfort during transport of patients to medical facilities

Abstract

This article presents geographic information system usage in transportation management for comfort calculations, analysing vehicle vibration data measured during patient transportation. The main goal of this article is to develop a methodology for automatic discomfort cause recognition (DCR) that may be tested under real life conditions. We analysed differences between uncomfortable locations detected by passengers during patient transportation (according to their subjective opinions) and uncomfortable locations detected by the measurement system. The measuring system is based on the three-axis accelerometer which is used to determine road comfort values for specific locations gathered by a GPS module. The results obtained were compared with data collected by passengers. During driving, when they experienced discomfort, passengers marked locations in near real time using the GIS. The data thus obtained were analysed with the data obtained by DCR. For the first time, the application of GIS provides analytical tools to create spatial data and define spatial data relations that determine comfort. Testing under real conditions, involving three separate cases, shows a high degree of correlation between the results. The proposed system allows dynamic comfort threshold criteria management and provides a visual representation of summarized tabular data.