Benefits of a coordinated fog-to-cloud resources management strategy on a smart city scenario

The advent of fog computing devices as computing paradigm enriching traditional cloud computing applications, paves the way to deploy innovative services, typically not completely appropriate and well supported by cloud computing technology. For example, fog computing is highly suitable for services requiring high constraints on delay, such as dependable services in the e-health arena or tracking strategies in manufacturing processes. Recently, some initiatives have focussed on putting together fog and cloud computing to make the best out of utilizing both, such as the reference architecture by the OpenFog consortium or the Fog-to-Cloud (F2C) concept. However, such a scenario requires a novel management strategy taking over the foreseen specific demands. In this paper, we argue the benefits of a F2C architecture on a particular application to be deployed on a smart city or smart environment scenario.This work is supported by the H2020 mF2C project (730929). For UPC authors is also supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and by the European Regional Development Fund under contract TEC2015-66220-R (MINECO/FEDER).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

An Online Training Intervention on Prehospital Stroke Codes in Catalonia to Improve the Knowledge, Pre-Notification Compliance and Time Performance of Emergency Medical Services Professionals

Strokes are a time-dependent medical emergency. The training of emergency medical service (EMS) professionals is essential to ensure the activation of stroke codes with pre-notification, as well as a rapid transfer to achieve early therapy. New assessment scales for the detection of patients with suspected large vessel occlusion ensures earlier access to endovascular therapy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact on an online training intervention focused on the Rapid Arterial oCclusion Evaluation (RACE) scoring of EMS professionals based on the prehospital stroke code in Catalonia from 2014 to 2018 in a pre-post intervention study. All Catalonian EMS professionals and the clinical records from primary stroke patients were included. The Kirkpatrick model guided the evaluation of the intervention. Data were collected on the knowledge on stroke recognition and management, pre-notification compliance, activated stroke codes and time performance of EMS professionals. Knowledge improved significatively in most items and across all categories, reaching a global achievement of 82%. Pre-notification compliance also improved significantly and remained high in the long-term. Increasingly higher notification of RACE scores were recorded from 60% at baseline to 96.3% in 2018, and increased on-site clinical care time and global time were also observed. Therefore, the online training intervention was effective for increasing EMS professionals' knowledge and pre-notification compliance upon stroke code activation, and the wide adoption of a new prehospital scale for the assessment of stroke severity (i.e., the RACE scale) was achieved