AI-powered smart emergency services support for 9-1-1 call handlers using textual features and SVM model for digital health optimization.

Abstract

In emergency situations, 9-1-1 is considered the first point of contact, and their call handlers play a crucial role in managing the emergency response. Due to the large number of daily calls and the hectic routine, there are severe chances that the call handlers can make any mistake or human error during data taking in a high-pressure environment. These mistakes or errors impact 9-1-1 performance in emergencies. To address this problem, this research introduces an AI-powered digital health framework called Emergency Calls Assistant (ECA) that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to assist call handlers during data collection. ECA is designed to predict the type of emergency, suggest relevant questions to collect deeper information, suggest pre-arrival instructions to emergency personnel, and generate incident reports that helps in data-driven decision making. The ECA framework works in two phases; the first phase is to convert the audio call into digital textual form, and the second phase is to analyze the textual information using NLP tools and mining techniques to retrieve contextual information. The second phase also deals with emergency categorization using a support vector machine (SVM) learning model to prioritize the emergency dealing with an accuracy of 92.7%. The key factors involved in categorization by ML models are the severity of injury and weapons involvement. The objective of ECA's development is to provide digital health-saving technology to 9-1-1 call handlers and save lives by making accurate decisions by providing real-time assistance. This research aligns with the advancement of digital health technologies by exhibiting how NLP-driven decision support systems can revolutionize emergency healthcare, improve patient outcomes through real-time AI integration, and reduce errors.