Emergency Medical Dispatch: State of the Art in 2018 and Future Developments

In 2018, all dispatch centres should offer added-value services to the patients, such as telephone cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), use of first responders and public automatic external defibrillator (AED) through Apps, coaching witnesses to inject epinephrine in case of anaphylaxis or glucagon when facing a patient with hypoglycemia. Dispatch centres must also contribute to a better use of available resources (ambulances, prehospital physicians). This can only be achieved by collecting data based on level of priority used, and comparing it to the severity of cases described by paramedics once on site. This may allow to measure over and under triage by dispatch centres. The appropriate use of lights and sirens may also contribute to reduce risks for emergency medical services (EMS) personal, patients and the general population. Finally, mergers of dispatch centres may reduce fixed costs, ease recruitment and continuous education issues, and improve the quality of care.