The cherry-red STARS helicopter is a familiar sight in Alberta, and now a Calgary wireless company is helping the air-rescue service forge a stronger data link between doctors, medical records and on-scene emergency teams.
A new supply-and-development contract announced last week with the Alberta Shock Trauma Air Rescue Society is a major move into air dispatch technology by Triangulum Corporation, which will not only provide STARS with its backbone QAlert information tracking system, but will co-develop a customized air-dispatch component.
“To partner with someone like that gives us a great deal of credibility. But in order to gain that credibility, we obviously have to perform,” says Triangulum manager Grant Sterling.
When it’s installed next month, the QAlert Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system will help STARS monitor and log specific patient cases from accident scene or hospital transfer through various treatment stages.
For STARS CEO Dr. Greg Powell, the different phases of a rescue or patient-transfer operation are called the “chain of survival,” and while it’s vital for medical and rescue personnel to have a clear picture of events from the moment a patient enters care, the software package now used by STARS doesn’t tie together all the links in the chain.
A typical case: a serious car accident on a rural highway. Paramedics on scene notify the local doctor, who decides the patient needs sophisticated critical care. The doctor may contact a specialist in Calgary while arranging for the STARS air ambulance to fly in.
“So far, we have two docs and a paramedic talking. The wheels are being set in motion,” says Powell, adding the patient may also undergo X-rays or other procedures before the STARS crew arrives.
But it is only when STARS begins to respond that documentation on the current software begins. “It missed all of that stuff before,” notes Powell. “It’s not integrated forward into the rest of the chain of events.”
By better tracking each case, STARS will be better able to measure the quality of its service and average response times as well as compiling a complete database of the event. While the dispatch records of a ground ambulance transfer might involve 15 minutes of communication time, an emergency air rescue or patient-transfer operation could take hours, with several levels of communication between pilots, sending and receiving doctors, ground transportation, police and on-scene paramedics.
“It’s not a case of helping us dispatch (the helicopter), because you can do that with the simplest of technology. It’s really a case of helping us log it, monitor it and improve it . . . ,” says Powell.
“We don’t hope for this to be a uniquely STARS project. This will help patient care in a whole host of ways. If we make it so anybody can pick up on it, with minor modifications, it will benefit lots of people.”
For Triangulum CEO Tim Crago, the deal with STARS is the next stage in the development of the publicly traded company whose technology is rooted in global positioning and wireless asset tracking. The corporate name, he says, was inspired by the marriage of the three technologies of location, wireless communication and applications.
The company’s PC-based QAlert software, designed for EMS, fire and police services, is already in use in the ground ambulance-dispatch system in the Foothills district south of Calgary. Triangulum also has installed location and transmitting devices aboard British helicopters at the Suffield military base near Medicine Hat.
But the air-dispatch industry in North America has been under-addressed, he believes, and is an area with tremendous commercial potential.
Most hospitals and medical centres across North America usually have a higher volume of ground ambulance calls than air transfers — and so their air-dispatch systems are somewhat less than state-of-the-art.
“None of them have a system that will work for both sides. That’s the market we know will give us a big move forward.”
By working together to develop a new air-dispatch software module, Crago says Triangulum and STARS can share their expertise in creating a real-world product.
“This isn’t a bunch of scientists or developers sitting in the back room and saying: ‘Geez I think it should be this.’ It’s actually being developed for them in their shop,” he says. “The product we get out the other end, if we’re right, should be extremely marketable, because it’s been developed right within an air-dispatch organization.”
The company also hopes to eventually install a mobile reporting unit on the STARS helicopter, and although writing the software to accommodate mid-flight data entry is possible, finding the appropriate hardware will be a challenge.
The missing link, says Crago, is finding robust equipment that is technologically astute, small and properly priced. The only device that can meet those requirements is a high-end laptop, “and that just won’t work in that environment,” Crago added.
Powell agreed. “No matter how tough you build these things, you’re running in and out of scene calls, you’re landing in the road, running into ditches. Your actual keyboards and pieces of hardware that the software’s on get broken very easily.”
Triangulum’s eventual goal is to provide STARS staff with PDA-style devices on which they can enter everything from flight plans to patient details.
Crago credits the air-rescue society for recognizing the need to develop and maintain cutting-edge dispatch technology.
“I think there’s a tremendous amount of insightfulness on STARS’ part here, because from a corporate perspective it’s not easy to make this sort of base decision early in the game. And they’ve made it. They’re setting themselves up to be leading edge.”
