Technology for trauma: testing the validity of a smartphone app for pre-hospital clinicians

With the introduction of regional trauma networks in England, ambulance clinicians have been required to make triage decisions relating to severity of injury, and appropriate destination for the patient, which may require 'bypassing' the nearest Emergency Department. A 'Trauma Unit Bypass Tool' is utilised in this process. The Major Trauma Triage tool smartphone application (App) is a digital representation of a tool, available for clinicians to use on their smartphone. Prior to disseminating the application, validity and performance against the existing paper-based tool was explored.

A case-based study using clinical scenarios was conducted. Scenarios, with appropriate triage decisions, were agreed by an expert panel. Ambulance clinicians were assigned to either the paper-based tool or smartphone app group and asked to make a triage decision using the available information. The positive predictive value (PPV) of each tool was calculated.

The PPV of the paper tool was 0.76 and 0.86 for the smartphone app. User comments were mainly positive for both tools with no negative comments relating to the smartphone app.

The smartphone app version of the Trauma Unit Bypass Tool performs at least as well as the paper version and can be utilised safely by pre-hospital clinicians in supporting triage decisions relating to potential major trauma.