NEW TOOLS TO REDUCE DEATHS AND DISABILITIES BY IMPROVING EMERGENCY CARE: URGENCY SOFTWARE, OCCULT INJURY WARNINGS, AND AIR MEDICAL SERVICES DATABASE

摘要

Research by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had developed technologies to improve transport and treatment of crash victims. Multidisciplinary (engineering, medical, and epidemiological) research has been initiated to improve the ability for: (a) identifying the approximately 250,000 crashed vehicles with occupants that probably have serious injuries each year, (b) alerting emergency medical care providers to the potential for serious (especially occult) injuries, and (c) enhancing the timeliness and quality of rescue and treatment through better utilization of air medical services. These improvements will lead to reducing the deaths and disabilities resulting from crash injuries. This paper describes recent advances in tools to improve the rescue, transport, and treatment of seriously injured crash victims. Specifically, this paper reports on the development of URGENCY software for crash injury assessment, an Occult Injury Database (OID) for emergency medical warning flags, and the Atlas & Database of Air Medical Services (ADAMS). These tools provide for timely and appropriate rescue actions when needed.