The Trauma Patient Tracking System: implementing a wireless monitoring infrastructure for emergency response

Abstract

In mass trauma situations, emergency personnel are challenged with the task of prioritizing the care of many injured victims. We propose a trauma patient tracking system (TPTS) where first-responders tag all patients with a wireless monitoring device that continuously reports the location of each patient. The system can be used not only to prioritize patient care, but also to determine the time taken for each patient to receive treatment. This is important in training emergency personnel and in identifying bottlenecks in the disaster response process. In situations where biochemical agents are involved, a TPTS may be employed to determine sites of cross-contamination. In order to track patient location in both outdoor and indoor environments, we employ both Global Positioning System (GPS) and Television/ Radio Frequency (TVRF) technologies. Each patient tag employs IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi)/TCP/IP networking to communicate with a central server via any available Wi-Fi basestation. A key component to increase TPTS fault-tolerance is a mobile Wi-Fi basestation that employs redundant Internet connectivity to ensure that tags at the disaster scene can send information to the central server even when local infrastructure is unavailable for use. We demonstrate the robustness of the system in tracking multiple patients in a simulated trauma situation in an urban environment.

Designing a model of patient tracking system for natural disaster in Iran

“…A component derived from the model in the present study regarding technology theme was the use of PDAs in triage and secondary triage of the patients in the scene by rescuers and emergency medical services team, identifying the patients, taking photographs of the patients for subsequent identification, monitoring vital signs, recording the patients’ main complaints and vital information, medical care, and status of evacuation from the scene, mapping for planning for the scene, observing and rapidly transferring the resources to different zones. This is consistent with wireless medical system for triage of advanced aid disaster network,[ 31 ] study of three groups of Washington's public health and prehospital emergency services supported with National Medical Library,[ 25 ] electronic patient record at John's Mercy Medical Center at the USA,[ 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 ] Wireless Internet Information System for Medical Response in Disasters in common project of University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology Funded by the National Library of Medicine,[ 18 44 ] Patient at a Glance and Emergency Vital Signs Tracking’ project in England,[ 32 ] Disaster and Mass Casualty Information Management System collaborating with Tokyo Electronic Systems Corporation in collaboration with the Osaka General Medical Center of the Osaka,[ 27 ] project on information-support solution in Emergency Medical services of Fukuoka Medical Association. [ 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 …”

Evacuation of Intensive Care Units During Disaster: Learning From the Hurricane Sandy Experience

“…The benefits of a systematic approach to patient prioritization and resource requirements demonstrated by the practical experience of one of the participating hospitals underlines the benefits of a evacuation preparation checklist and tracking system, which are readily available. [30][31][32][33][34][35] Providers who are stressed will typically revert to familiar daily routines and processes. The fact that respondents more frequently reported the use of routine transfer forms over disaster forms represents either suboptimal preparation, with the potential for process improvement, or poor correlation between the content and structure of the forms and real-time documentation requirements.…”

Future Connectivity for Disaster and Emergency Point of Care

“…Another system, the Trauma Patient Tracking System 35 developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, tracks patient locations using Global Positioning System outdoor and television/radio frequency indoor.…”

“…Solutions to secure access include requiring verification by virtual private network access for both receiving and sending devices, using an access control server, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) security protocol wireless network encryption, and other security requirements used in hospital settings. 35,44–47 Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and WPA2) encryption also should be considered when deciding how to protect patient data. WPA and WPA2 offer several advantages over WEP.…”