Intelligent Tutor for WMD EMS Incident Management

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) We propose to develop EMS/IM ITS, a suite of simulation-based intelligent tutoring systems and scenarios that will enable practice-based learning of WMD emergency medical services incident management principles and skills, including situation assessment, decision-making, and real-time execution of EMS tasks within an incident command structure. To support practical and economical development of many EMS/IM ITS training scenarios, we will also develop software tools and development methods that enable efficient authoring of new scenarios and adaptation/enhancement of existing scenarios by instructors or subject matter experts, without programming. We will leverage our tutoring system development tools and our experience developing tutoring systems for medical training, command and control, and tactical decision-making. The National Incident Management System (NIMS) was mandated by HSPD-5 to provide a comprehensive, national approach to domestic incident management, so that all levels of government across the nation could work efficiently and effectively together to prepare for, respond to, and recover from domestic incidents. We believe that EMS/IM ITS can contribute to NIMS by providing scenario-based learning of incident management principles for medical first responders, consistent with NIMS, and tailorable via scenario authoring to the specific circumstances and incident management plans of each government organization. This proposed Phase I effort will lay the groundwork for the Phase II effort, by producing 1) requirements and design of the system to be developed during Phase II, 2) a software prototype that illustrates our concept, and 3) a formative evaluation of the prototype and design that provides a basis for estimating the feasibility and effectiveness of the operational system that would be developed during Phase II.