To understand and mitigate infant patient vibration exposure during emergency ground and air transport

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Each year, thousands of newborns in Canada are transported by air or ground ambulance toreceive specialized medical care. These infants are often premature and especially vulnerableduring transport. Vibration exposure during transport may contribute risk of serious long-termconsequences including brain injury. To decease risk during transport, specialized equipmentis used. However, vibration levels experienced by infants and contributing factors are not wellunderstood. This lack of knowledge affects the ability to transport newborn patients in thesafest manner possible.Our goal is to increase the safety of infant transport by reducing vibration exposure. Wepropose a research program which seeks to understand how vibrations caused by the roadand air environments are transferred to the infant. This will allow us to propose novel methodsto reduce vibration exposure and improve the equipment for transporting fragile infants. Wewill measure vibrations in many transport scenarios including within hospitals as well as inground ambulances, helicopters, and airplanes. The results will be used to develop testequipment and procedures for evaluating the transport equipment. This research will enablebetter understanding of the problem and provide a reliable way to test the transportequipment and procedures. It will lead to new tools for planning routes that minimize vibrationand for monitoring patient vibration.Our research brings together expertise in pediatrics and engineering to study novel solutionsto this problem. The team includes engineers from Carleton University and physicians fromlarge childrens hospitals (CHEO in Ottawa, SickKids in Toronto). The physicians represent aprovincial committee tasked with providing advice and recommendations to improve safety,quality of care, and the patients and familys experience. This collaboration will ensure thatthe results are communicated to the clinicians who can impact positive change.