Abstract- In this paper, we present the design and development of an integrated database system for the support of an emergency health care department. The system allows patient administration, patient record management, information exchange within the department and Ambulance vehicles management. It was designed as an addition to a previous developed system which supports emergency telemedicine. The system has passed the initial testing and verification phase and is now entering the final evaluation phase before moving into the department’s daily routine. Keywords- Emergency health care, medical databases, Ambulance I. INTRODUCTION he accurate management of data interchanged within a hospital department can become a useful tool which can help experts when handling medical incidents. This can be achieved by using Information Technologies [1]. A digital environment can provide easy access to any medical information previously recorded easier and faster than any other way. It can be used in order to monitor the procedures followed in a department thus enabling the head of the department do several improvements. It can be used for statistical reasons thus helping in decision support or any research, epidemiological or public health studies. For many years several working groups under international bodies have been working in order to cover several issues of patient medical records. A short list of the main issues and standards discussed and created can be: Data Interchange o DICOM [2],[3]. Concerns medical images interchange. o HL7 [2],[4]. Electronic data interchange in health environments. o CEN TC 251 [5]. Electronic health record communication Coding of Digital data o ICD [6]. International classification of Diseases. o CPT [7]. Current Procedural Terminology. Identification o UHID [8].Universal Healthcare Identifier. o HIN [9]. Health Industry Number. o HIBN [10].Health Industry Bar code. Data Security o ASTM E21.21 [11]. Patient record o Prorec/Eurorec [12],[13] Having in mind all the above mentioned standards and efforts and the standard of ASTM for View of Emergency Medical care patient record [14] ; we had tried to record all the procedures of the Accidents and Emergency (ER) department of Nicosia General hospital, and create a system which will be able to support the daily routine of the department. The Hospital is located in Nicosia which is the capital of Cyprus and the ER department is responsible for all the emergency incidents that happen in Nicosia City and the near suburbs. The department has 120000 incidents annually out of which 8000 include ambulance transportation, the rest of the incidents concern patients carried to the department either by relatives or arriving by their self for not severe cases such as minor injuries. The department is currently being supported by a telemedicine system [15] which is installed in ambulance vehicles and is able to transmit several biosignals from a moving ambulance to the department thus enabling expert doctors instruct paramedics and ambulance personnel how to treat several cases that need specialized health care. The proposed system will be an addition to the emergency telemedicine system. It will allow the recording of all data interchanged in the department including incident, patient records and telemedicine data. II. METHODS In order to complete the design and development of the system in the best possible way, we had followed a structured development approach starting from user requirements and followed by system design, system development, system verification and finally system operation and support. The procedure was performed in collaboration with the users so as to achieve the best possible results. The following sections describe the main issues of system design and implementation. A. Use Cases User needs for the described system were recorded using several use cases which cover all the procedures performed in the department. Mainly the tasks performed within the ER department are: Recording of emergency phone calls which can be: o Directly to the department. T An Integrated System for the Support of an Emergency Health Care Department E.Kyriacou 1 , C. Antoniades 2 , A. Kouppis 3 1 Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, 75 Kallipoleos Str., P.O.Box 20578, 1678 Nicosia, Cyprus ekyriac@ucy.ac.cy 2 Accidents and Emergency Department, Nicosia General Hospital, Ministry of Health, Cyprus 3 Ambulance Services, Ministry of Health, Cyprus Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology 27th Annual Conference Shanghai, China, September 1-4, 2005 0-7803-8740-6/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE. 5462