The Design of Wearable Medical Device for Triaging Disaster Casualties in Developing Countries

摘要

Disasters create mass casualties and the number ofudcasualties usually surpasses the capability of medical resources,udhence, medical teams must attach paper triage to casualties foruddetermining the priority of treatments based on the severity ofudtheir condition. However, since casualties??? condition could changeudat anytime, the paper triage cannot provide the latest informationudof their health condition. Therefore, we have developed a wearableudmedical device that can continuously monitor the healthudcondition of casualties. It is a lightweight and low-cost wearableudelectronic triage with sensing system that can monitor the vitaludsign of casualties and classify them into three levels of severeudconditions, i.e., major, delayed, and minor status. The electronicudtriage is mainly built from a low-power 8-bit microcontroller unit,udRF units, and sensors including pulse oximetry and thermocoupleudbreath sensor. This electronic triage has been developed usingudlow-cost electronic components that are available in developingudcountries such as Indonesia, so that, our electronic triage canudbe easily manufactured and maintained locally. Furthermore, weudhave also developed a simple android-based mobile applicationudfor data acquisition, priority classification, data storage and dataudtransfer to medical record server in hospitals.