Healthcare is an umbrella term for health-related services delivered by healthcare workers (health human resources) to people. Hospital care is only a part of healthcare, since a huge part of it is pre-hospital (from the time of injury or onset of chief complaint until the patient is brought to the hospital) and post-hospital care (rehabilitation, follow-up care).
It can be argued that all life-threatening conditions are time-sensitive; that is, the longer it takes for the patient to be treated, the worse his or her prognosis is. This is why we say "time is muscle" in patients with STEMI, or "time is spine" for patients with spinal cord injuries, or even "time is brain" for patients who suffered a stroke.
With this, in accordance with the 1978 Alma Ata Declaration, there is a need to strengthen pre-hospital care in order to save lives & promote health because health is a fundamental human right of every individual. In order to strengthen pre-hospital care, we can utilize clinical decision support systems, which leads to:
- More accurate diagnoses,
- Improved patient triage, and
- Reduction of prehospital time.
Bashiri, A., Alizadeh Savareh, B., & Ghazisaeedi, M. (2019). Promotion of prehospital emergency care through clinical decision support systems: opportunities and challenges. Clinical and experimental emergency medicine, 6(4), 288-296. doi:10.15441/ceem.18.032