Newborn emergency transport based on the fifth-generation wireless networks and blockchain

Excerpt

Neonatal care is of great significance to health capability. Since neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) started to be established in the late 1980s in China, neonatal mortality has decreased each year to reach 3.4 ‰ in 2020 [1, 2]. However, the improvement for neonatal care is still on the way. More than three-fifths of deaths included critically ill neonates occur in their first 28 days [3]. Critically ill neonates usually have lower gestational age and body weight, leading to high mortality or requiring specific treatment and monitoring [4]. It is a common practice to transfer a critically ill newborn patient to a tertiary children’s hospital with an excellent NICU. Therefore, it is crucial to promote patients’ safety by improving the neonatal transport network services [5]. Owing to the complexity and rapid changes in neonatal conditions, especially for those requiring multi-disciplinary treatment, there is a high reliance on a specialized newborn transport team [6, 7]. Regular pre-hospital first aid, provided by 120 First Aid Center in China, cannot fully meet the referral needs of all critically ill newborns in most areas. As reported, the newborn emergency transport service, which brings a “portable NICU” to critically ill neonates proactively and rapidly, has played a pivotal role in improving neonatal treatment [8]. To meet such increasing demands, it is necessary to make the most use of state-of-the-art information technology to achieve high-quality inter-hospital transport of critically ill neonates by synchronizing data on neonates’ condition and progress during the entire transfer period, hopefully striving for the greatest opportunity to save lives [9, 10]. …