Franciscan Health's emergency department in Indianapolis deployed a smartphone app from the New York City-based startup Twiage in July to streamline communication with local emergency medical services agencies and ambulance companies.
With Twiage, emergency medical technicians and paramedics can deliver information about a patient's health status, symptoms and treatment to the ED in advance of their arrival. Twiage's mission is to enable ED teams to prepare appropriate services, such as operating rooms and imaging equipment, so caregivers can address critical patients as quickly as possible.
"The prehospital patient care environment can be stressful and noisy, which makes it a challenge to relay accurate information to the hospital before the patient arrives," Jon Kavanagh, a paramedic and EMS liaison for Franciscan Health Indianapolis, said in a news release. An estimated 20 percent of patients treated at the ED each day arrive by ambulance, according to Franciscan Health.
EMTs and paramedics can also send necessary personal identification information to the hospital, so staff can begin the patient registration process prior to their arrival at the hospital. Once the patient reaches the hospital, all personal health information is automatically deleted from the responder's app, according to Twiage.