Optimizing trauma system design: the GEOS (Geospatial Evaluation of Systems of Trauma Care) approach.
Jan O Jansen, Jonathan J Morrison, Handing Wang, Robin Lawrenson, Gerry Egan, Shan He, Marion K Campbell
Author Information
Jan O Jansen: From the Department of Surgery and Intensive Care Medicine (J.O.J.), Aberdeen Royal Infirmary; Health Services Research Unit (J.O.J., M.K.C.), University of Aberdeen; and Scottish Ambulance Service (R.L., G.E.), Edinburgh; Academic Unit of Surgery (J.J.M.), Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Glasgow; Academic Department of Military Surgery & Trauma (J.J.M.), Royal Centre for Defence Medicine; and School of Computer Science (S.H.), University of Birmingham; and Key Lab of Intelligent Perception and Image Understanding (H.W.), Ministry of Education, Xidian University, Xi'an, China.
BACKGROUND: Trauma systems have been shown to reduce death and disability from injury but must be appropriately configured. A systematic approach to Trauma system design can help maximize geospatial effectiveness and reassure stakeholders that the best configuration has been chosen. METHODS: This article describes the GEOS [Geospatial Evaluation of Systems of Trauma Care] methodology, a mathematical modeling of a population-based data set, which aims to derive geospatially optimized Trauma system configurations for a geographically defined setting. GEOS considers a region's spatial injury profile and the available resources and uses a combination of travel time analysis and multiobjective optimization. The methodology is described in general and with regard to its application to our case study of Scotland. RESULTS: The primary outcome will be Trauma system configuration. CONCLUSION: GEOS will contribute to the design of a Trauma system for Scotland. The methodology is flexible and inherently transferable to other settings and could also be used to provide assurance that the configuration of existing Trauma systems is fit for purpose.
