Root Concept

* Project Vision

EMACS is a paradigm shift in health care delivery putting together state of the arts miniaturized computer technologies and data communication technologies to create a rational and realistic solution to the problem of health care delivery on the slopes of a mountain.

 

* Rationale

For all practical purposes, a climbing party on a mountain is alone. In an emergency situation it should ideally rely exclusively upon its own resources. At relatively low elevation, traditional evacuation procedures can be implemented relatively safely. But beyond 15,000ft, the costs and the risks associated with this alternative raise exponentially with altitude while its expected benefits decrease accordingly.

In this context EMACS is designed to provide an integrated solution to two unresolved mountaineering issues:
- how to provide state of the art medical diagnostic capability to members of a climbing expedition?
- how to provide interim procedures to stabilize critical health problems and injuries?

As an integrated networking environment EMACS would allow climbers to continuously monitor with great accuracy their physiological state during ascents, provide them with real time health care delivery at any elevation, and enable them to participate in the formulation and implementation of critical health care decisions in emergency situations.

As an integrated networking environment EMACS™ would link together remote Tele-Medicine centers, personal locator beacons, vital signs monitoring sensors and live video streams through both local area wireless networks and wide area satellite networks.

As a health care provider access point, EMACS would far exceed the success of traditional search & rescues alternatives with a far better probability to save lives without putting additional lives at risk: it would provide better health care delivery, feature instantaneous response time, and would do it all at a lower cost.

 

* Stakeholders

Several different groups of people are interested parties to EMAC' system development:

Mountaineering Association & Climbers

• NMA Nepal Mountaineering Association 
• CMA Chandannagore Mountaineering Association
• AAC American Alpine Club

  Mountaineering associations, because of the influence they exert on their members are a catalyst of change. Their understanding, participation and feedback are essential in assuring the successful development of such a project.

  Climbers themselves are of utmost importance to this project as EMACS proposes to be a solution to their health care delivery problem on the mountain.

Search & Rescue Organizations

• HRAN Himalayan Rescue Association Nepal
• RMRG Rocky Mountains Rescue Group

  Search and rescue organizations have a vested interest in this project. They are acutely aware of the dangers of conducting operations beyond 15,000ft and of their staggering costs. They are also increasingly reluctant to cover the expenses their participation to mountaineering rescues involves, are actively involved in lobbying the US Congress to relieve them of their current responsibilities, and would certainly welcome a technology that would help them achieve that goal*.

  EMACS Project Documentation
  American Alpine Club versus US Congress: * Request for Comment on Law PL 106 486

Federal, State and Military agencies

For a variety of reasons Federal and States agencies are potential stakeholders in this project. Federal regulations with the product technology and others legal requirements are one particular concern.

The US Department of Defense is interested in the problem EMACS is trying to solve. The deployment of US troops at high elevation in Afghanistan has triggered a renewed interest in innovative technological solutions to high altitude medical issues from the military.

• PSWN Public Safety Wireless Network
• MESA Project Mobility for Emergency and Safety Applications

* Starting Assumptions and Constraints

- Development Schedule

Development schedule is tight and a deadline of about a month as been set for completion of the design process, prototyping, and usability studies.

Requirements analysis will be done without the tools of either contextual inquiry or participatory analysis as a mock search & rescue operation above 15,000ft is clearly unfeasible at this time.

Interviews will be considered; however, two factors might result in eliminating them altogether. Time constraints and limited access to mountaineering organizations and high altitude climbers in Hawaii is a non trivial obstacle in their actual implementation. Also, observations and interviews are ethnographic tools used by “observer participants”: because the author has done graduate work in anthropology and has been a participant in several mountaineering expeditions and search and rescue operations he certainly looked at mountaineering from an ethnographic perspective. A such the data is readily available to the author and further observations and interviews are to large extent superfluous.

- Target Market

Marketing research indicates that there is currently no alternative products available in this market segment and that potential market share is substantial enough to warrant significant investment in product research and development.

- Cost

Initial estimates for EMACS' projected retail price are relatively low. An expedition could be EMACS compliant for about $10,000, the average price of a climbing permit charged to mountaineering expeditions in India, China, and Nepal. This price would include computer hardware, monitoring sensors, vital signs monitoring software and consumer support.

- Prototyping

In order to speed up prototyping EMACS will initially be implemented on a PDA running custom vital signs monitoring software.
As a consumer product EMACS will be run on much lighter and cheaper computer components.