HomeAeromedical Conference 2024

Aeromedical Conference 2024

Essex & Herts Air Ambulance’s renowned Aeromedical Conference will return to Ford Dunton Technical Centre in Laindon, Basildon on the 21st of June 2024.

Aeromedical Conference 2024 will explore the theme of innovation within healthcare, the emergency services sector and beyond.

Innovation refers to the process of introducing change, it plays a crucial role in driving progress and is something that has been occurring knowingly and unknowingly around us since history began, now it has even become an industry of its own.

At Essex & Herts Air Ambulance being ‘Innovative’ sits within our core values and is something we strive to achieve clinically, operationally and as a wider charity.

Throughout the conference we will be hearing from expert speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds discussing current projects and what is on the horizon. We will explore how these examples can support us in the pre-hospital field as well as how they are changing the system we work in and ultimately the benefit to patients and the public.

Within this theme will explore different pillars of innovation including:

Product innovation – introducing new or improved products.

Process innovation – enhancing or optimising existing processes.

Organisational innovation – implementing new structures or management practices.

New for this year…

We will have two sub-themed hours through which ‘lightning’ talks will present multi agency approaches to the same technology; how it can be implemented for benefit in different fields. Our first hour will be looking at Virtual Reality (VR) for education and emergency training. The second hour will explore the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones in emergency services for tasks such as search and rescue operations, delivering medical supplies to remote areas and assessing disaster-stricken areas from the air.

On the topic of systems and processes, Claire Baker, PhD student Imperial College London, will be talking to us about the AutoTriage project. The project aims to investigate whether on-board vehicle sensors could be used to predict the severity of Traumatic Brain Injury within Road Traffic Collisions. The future is being able to connect this data with the clinical data obtained after the incident to predict the severity of TBI, resulting in better vehicle safety measures and policies and standards and ultimately, ensuring emergency services are at the right place, at the right time, with the right resource.

The day will also feature clinical case studies with a focus on the conference theme that will undoubtably offer shared learning for all attending.

Ultimately, innovation is a dynamic and transformative force that plays a crucial role in survival, driving progress and shaping the future of patient outcomes across all agencies. By the end of the day we hope to have a better understanding of what is currently happening within our own pre-hospital areas and how we can all translate this shared learning to push the boundaries in our domain and improve for the future.