About SENTINEL
The Coventry University Research Centre for Future Transport and Cities (CFTC) has won a prestigious large grant from the Road Safety Trust (£409,319), with the project “In-Situ Mobile Application for the Triage of Pedestrians in Vehicle Collision (SENTINEL)”.
CFTC has a strong heritage in transport safety and was awarded the Prince Michael International Road Safety Award 2021 on “Delivering Improved Pedestrian Post Crash Triage”.
SENTINEL is a collaborative project with the Coventry University (CU), the University Hospital of Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW), West Midlands Ambulance Survives (WMAAS) and The Air Ambulance Services (TAAS), with the purpose to create innovative and disruptive in-situ triage and forensic technology.
In the UK, in 2022, 376 pedestrians were killed and 19318 were injured, highlighting the important societal impact and a notable economical loss of £2.2M per death and £261,498 for each seriously injured victim. 8.5% of pedestrian victims are incorrectly triaged, due to the limitations of suitable tools. Emergency services can unintentionally direct pedestrian victims to the wrong hospital, especially when these victims do not appear to be severely injured at the scene of the collisions. In 3.8% of pedestrian collision cases, the victims died within 28 days of the collisions, and in 4.7% of the cases, victims sustained a serious (AIS3+) traumatic brain injury (TBI) which have for effect long-term injuries, affecting physical, cognitive, and psychological well-being.
The aim of SENTINEL is to create and test a new mobile triage application for ambulance and Emergency Department (ED) services to assess, by the roadside, adult pedestrian brain injuries (16yo+), faster, more accurately and efficiently than current NHS systems.
A laypeople summary is available: