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Given the scope of emergency care, advances in emergency medicine research may be one of the most important areas of health care within the next decade. DEFINITION OF EMERGENCY CARE RESEARCH The broad scope of emergency care is reflected in the domains of emergency care research. The emergency care patient population is diverse and includes pediatric, geriatric, medically underserved, and minorities, as well as those with acute illness, exacerbation of chronic illnesses, and injuries (2). Correspondingly, emergency care research domains are broad in scope, covering broad ranges in the timing and scale of the entities being studied. Thus, emergency care research spans time-sensitive emergency care as well as chronic care, individual organ systems, regionalized health care systems, and population health. Three key aspects of emergency care research stand out (10): 1. Severity — life-threatening illness and injury 2. Vulnerability — all-inclusive populations, including geriatrics, pediatrics, and psychiatry 3. Time sensitivity — conditions marked in time-frames of minutes to hours Thus, emergency care research may be defined as “research [that] focuses on the discovery and application of time-critical diagnostics, decision making and treatments that save lives, prevent or reduce disability, and restore human health”. A global hypothesis for emergency care research is that “rapid diagnosis and early intervention in acute illness [and injury] or acutely decompensated chronic illness improves patient outcomes”. Consistent with this hypothesis, there are a number of emergency care interventions that have been shown to reduce mortality and improve outcomes for patients with acute, time-sensitive illness or injury.