The use of technology to transform the home into a safe-haven

On June 14, 2006 three reports were published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in regards to "THE FUTURE OF EMERGENCY CARE IN THE UNITED STATES HEALTH SYSTEM". The three combined reports: Hospital-Based Emergency Care at the Breaking Point, Emergency Medical Services at the Crossroads and Emergency Care for Children Growing Pains, are a clear reflection of the state we currently face, even without a major disaster. Some key findings drawn from all three reports showed that the emergency care system is ill-prepared to handle a major one. For example, many of the 41 million citizens who do not have medical insurance end up using the Emergency Departments (ED) as their source of "regular" care and many of these EDs are at or over capacity, there is little surge capacity for a major event, whether it takes the form of a natural disaster, disease outbreak, or terrorist attack. If we had during the major disaster event, a "contagion" element, i.e. pandemic flu, then the problem would be even more complicated, since the "regular" hospital patient population would need to be isolated from these patients. If we add to this equation the length of time involved in the "current" process of vaccine creation and production (i.e. the volume of vaccines that would be required to be provided to the citizens of the world), the scenario does not look to promising. A new model is needed then to address these requirements. In the developed world we have a number of devices (e.g., radio, TV, Computers, telephones, mobile devices, etc.) and infrastructure (e.g., cable, wireless networks, etc.) that are already supplying the homes and the individuals with a large number of independent applications and different types of information. These stovepipes or independently developed family that include: tele-banking, Telehealth, tele-education, e-commerce, entertainment on demand, etc. when "connected" as an integrated set, may provide an ideal environment, where families may stay at home for a long period of time (quarantine) and would have all the mechanisms in place for getting food and water from supermarkets, drugs from the pharmacy, the children would be able to go to school from home (in turn their school grounds may become temporary hospitals), adults could telecommute to work and minor conditions could be consulted and treated through these systems (with the help of a Telehealth platform that would include electronic health records), etc.