EMCON: A Comprehensive Emergency Response System for Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Background Emergency medical care in Pakistan remains uncoordinated due to the absence of a platform to connect hospitals, patients, and ambulances. Consequently, during periods of resource shortage and crowding of the emergency department at hospitals, patients and ambulances are unable to select the best site for patient management or transfer of patients, resulting in suboptimal care and poor outcomes. Objectives We developed a digital platform called EMCON (Emergency Connection) application, which can be used for inter-hospital and hospital-to-patient/ambulance communication to coordinate patient care. The platform offers real-time information on resource availability, facilitates interhospital patient transfers, coordinates ambulance responses, and assists patients in making decisions about seeking emergency care. Implementation The platform offers real-time information on resource availability, facilitates interhospital patient transfers, coordinates ambulance responses, and assists patients in making decisions about seeking emergency care. It has a range of features that allow hospitals to control the data that they share to maintain hospital buy-in, incorporates both electronic and manual data entry for real-time updates in low-resource settings or during electronic medical record disruption, and provides visual content and appointment scheduling services to keep patients engaged. Results The pilot testing of the EMCON platform yielded promising outcomes, highlighting its adaptability and effectiveness in diverse health care settings. Integration with an electronic medical record (EMR)-equipped tertiary hospital demonstrated seamless real-time data updates, ensuring efficient resource management and coordination. Meanwhile, the successful implementation at a resource-reliant blood bank underscored EMCON's versatility, allowing manual data entry for hospitals without EMR systems. These results emphasize the platform's practicality and potential to revolutionize emergency health care access in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). EMCON's ability to bridge coordination gaps and enhance resource allocation holds great promise for improving patient outcomes, particularly in resource-constrained settings. Conclusion EMCON serves as a promising solution to address critical coordination issues in emergency care, bridging the gap between hospitals, patients, and ambulances to improve emergency health care access in low-resource settings.