Abstract
BackgroundBefore patients are admitted into the emergency department, it is important to undertake a pre-hospital process, both in terms of treatment performance and a request for resources from an emergency unit. The existing system to triage patients in Thailand is not functioning to its full capacity in either the primary medical system or pre-hospital treatment with shortcomings in the areas of speed, features, and appropriate systems. There is a high possibility of issuing a false Initial Dispatch Code (IDC), which will cause the over or underutilisation of emergency resources, such as rescue teams, community hospitals and emergency medical volunteers.MethodsA usability system design, together with a reliability test, was applied to develop an application to optimise the pre-hospital process, specifically to sort patients, using an IDC to improve the request for emergency resources. The triage mobile application was developed on both iOS and Android operating systems to support patient triage based on Criteria Based Dispatch (CBD). The 25 main symptom categories covered by CBD were used to design and develop the application, and 12 emergency medical staff, including doctors and nurses, were asked to test the system in the aspects of triage protocol correction, triage reliability, usability and user satisfaction.ResultsThe results of testing the proposed triage application were compared with the time used to triage by experienced staff and it was found that, in non-trauma cases, it was faster and more effective to use the application for emergency operations and to correct the IDC code representation.ConclusionsThe triage application will be utilised to support the pre-hospital process and to classify patients’ conditions before they are admitted to the Emergency Department (ED). The application is suitable for users who are not medical emergency staff. Patients with non-trauma symptoms may be a suitable group to use the application in terms of time used to identify IDC for their own symptoms. The use of the application can be beneficial for those who wish to self-identify their symptoms before requesting medical services.
Highlights
Before patients are admitted into the emergency department, it is important to undertake a prehospital process, both in terms of treatment performance and a request for resources from an emergency unit
The trend of using smart technology in healthcare has increased on a global scale, thereby reducing the duties of medical staff, inadequate public health support and services are still problematic in Thailand
This study provided further assurance that emergency medical services could be optimised by the application of information technology for the benefit of patient safety
Summary
Before patients are admitted into the emergency department, it is important to undertake a prehospital process, both in terms of treatment performance and a request for resources from an emergency unit. The application of smart technology has become an increasingly common practice in daily life, especially in medical treatment. Advanced smart technology has been found to be widely used in medical healthcare; for example, in monitoring patients, tracing their health conditions, consultations by experts or doctors, obtaining suggestions related to healthcare medication, and much more [5, 6]. The number of people who need to consult doctors or receive medical services could be reduced by substituting new technology as an alternative [7, 8]. The trend of using smart technology in healthcare has increased on a global scale, thereby reducing the duties of medical staff, inadequate public health support and services are still problematic in Thailand. While applications of smart technology have been developed in an effort to ease the overcrowding of emergency care units, this has not solved all their operational problems
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