PHRESH powers connected ambulance to improve emergency care and health equity

Accessing timely, specialised care is especially challenging in acute medical situations and for remote populations. The ITEA project PHRESH (Patient Health Response in Emergent and Secure Habitats for Connected Healthcare) aims to overcome these barriers by combining wearable sensors, AI-driven analysis, and secure network connectivity in a privacy-preserving digital health framework. Its goal is to improve health risk assessment, emergency response, and treatment while ensuring data security and patient privacy.

Connected ambulance

In the Netherlands, the project’s connected ambulance use case is already demonstrating tangible benefits. Dutch project partners MEDrecord, AZN Connect, and Amsterdam UMC have jointly designed and implemented a digital pre-alert workflow for ambulance services. This allows paramedics to monitor patients on the way to the hospital and transmit data - including EEG signals, continuous blood pressure, speech, and video - directly to emergency teams. The seamless data exchange enables hospitals to prepare treatment in advance, saving valuable minutes in acute care, where every second counts, and helping improve triage, care preparation, and continuity of care.

The next step in this use case will be the testing of HealthTalk, an AI speech-to-text transcription solution developed by project partner MEDrecord. The tests will evaluate the feasibility of hands-free documentation, the accuracy of speech-derived structured data, and the potential to reduce administrative burden while accelerating information transfer during acute-care episodes.

By connecting devices, data, and healthcare professionals in a secure ecosystem, PHRESH is helping make emergency care faster, smarter, and more accessible - bringing the promise of better health outcomes within reach for all patients, no matter where they live.

More information

• https://itea4.org/project/phresh.html
• https://phresh-project.org/