Improving the prehospital identification and management of people presenting to the ambulance service with COVID 19 symptoms

Paramedics face unprecedented challenges in identifying and appropriately managing patients with Covid 19 (C-19). Little is known about C-19 patients or how the decisions the paramedics make affect their outcomes. We will analyse routinely collected patient data and collect data about a newly developed mobile phone application designed to improve decision making. We will investigate how C-19 patients present to paramedics, what decisions paramedics make about their transportation to hospital, and how these decisions affect patient outcomes. We will investigate whether the recently developed mobile phone application has potential to improve paramedic decision making for this patient population