Emergency? Ask an iPad's advice

Waikato Hospital is developing an iPad application that can accurately predict the pressure on hospital services following a major trauma like the Christchurch earthquake.

Called a casualty calculator, the app assesses what hospital services and how many staff in each area will be needed to cope with an emergency involving eight or more people.

Waikato Hospital's trauma director Dr Grant Christey says the casualty calculator can estimate issues such as the impact on x-ray equipment and operating theatres, and assess staffing requirements. Information can then be passed on to managers to allocate resources.

Christey said staff were confident testing of the application had proved it to be reasonably accurate and it was one of several technological developments that will improve patient care.

Other iPad apps in development will add to the technological tools available to doctors.

These developments follow reports from the UK that doctors there are downloading an iStethoscope app to their iPhones and using it to monitor heart rates by pressing the phone against a patient's chest, where the mobile's microphone picks up the heartbeat.

Mobile phones are also used by Kiwi emergency doctors, paramedics and other health specialists to send photographs of injuries to colleagues to seek treatment advice.

John Bonning, clinical director of Waikato's emergency department, says paramedics occasionally take pictures of crash sites to give emergency staff an appreciation of the type of carnage at the scene.

"I always assess patients by what they are doing in front of me, but the photographs do help in the decision-making."

A recent US study found that diagnoses from mobile phone pictures are about 90% accurate, as long as the accompanying patient information is specific enough.

The study found half of the cases where doctors were unable to make a diagnosis were because the images were too grainy.

In New Zealand there have been more startling results. A 2007 trial at Waikato Hospital using pxt-ing for emergency and trauma patients potentially saved four lives in three months, according to Christey.

Doctors here also use their mobile phones to take photos of a patient's monitor to send it to a colleague for further consultation or to send CT scans by phone.

Bonning says of particular use is photographing injuries or burns before they are treated or dressed, so that specialists can look at the injury without having to disturb the patient.

Pxts are treated as part of a patient's record and protocols protect privacy.

Bonning says use of mobile technology is set to expand, particularly in smaller rural hospitals, or where there is no specialist medical care.

Christie says communication technology is useful, but "I prefer the old-fashioned way of talking to someone as well".

- © Fairfax NZ News