System Tracks Emergency Patients During Disaster

A new emergency patient-tracking system (EPTS) is designed to rapidly communicate patient information from a casualty site to hospital medical staff by using personal digital assistants (PDAs) connected to a central database accessible on the Internet.

Based on bar-code technology, the patient information is provided while the patient is en route to a hospital to ensure that any one hospital is not overwhelmed in the event of a multi-casualty incident (MCI) or disaster. A "live” test by the St. Louis Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS; MO, USA) involved 60 patients from multiple sites who were taken to four hospitals in St. Louis. The hospitals quickly scanned patient bar codes, updated patient status in the system, and also accounted for walk-in patients.

Emergency managers at multiple locations, including the medical communications center, monitored the incidents and made recommendations to coordinate the response. Representatives from 35 hospitals in the St. Louis area have signed a contract to provide mutual aid at the time of a medical disaster. The EPTS was developed by Raytheon Company (Lexington, MA, USA).

"The EPTS gives St. Louis the first known regional system to track patients in the wake of a natural of man-made disaster,” said Dr. Jeffrey Lowell, head of the St. Louis MMRS. "The EPTS exceeded our expectations on the ability to track patients in the event of a multi-casualty incident.”




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