A next generation electronic triage to aid mass casualty emergency medical response

For years, emergency medical response communities have relied upon paper triage tags, clipboards of notes, and voice communications to share information during medical emergencies. This workflow, however, has proven labor intensive, time consuming, and prone to human error [1]. In collaboration with three EMS groups in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area, we have developed a next generation triage system to improve the effectiveness of emergency response. This system includes: 1) electronic triage tags, 2) wearable vital sign sensors, 3) base stations laptops to monitor and manage patients, 4) pervasive tracking software to locate patients at all stages of the disaster response process, and 5) PDAs to support documentation and communication. Our system has evolved through three iterations of rapid-development, field-studies, usability reviews, and focus-group interview. This paper summarizes engineering considerations for technologies that must operate under constraints of medical emergencies. It is our hope that the lessons reported in this paper will help technologists in developing future emergency response systems.