David M. White

The Advanced Health and Disaster Aid Network: A Light-Weight Wireless Medical System for Triage

Advances in semiconductor technology have resulted in the creation of miniature medical embedded systems that can wirelessly monitor the vital signs of patients. These lightweight medical systems can aid providers in large disasters who become overwhelmed with the large number of patients, limited resources, and insufficient information. In a mass casualty incident, small embedded medical systems facilitate patient care, resource allocation, and real-time communication in the advanced health and disaster aid network (AID-N). We present the design of electronic triage tags on lightweight, embedded systems with limited memory and computational power. These electronic triage tags use noninvasive, biomedical sensors (pulse oximeter, electrocardiogram, and blood pressure cuff) to continuously monitor the vital signs of a patient and deliver pertinent information to first responders. This electronic triage system facilitates the seamless collection and dissemination of data from the incident site to key members of the distributed emergency response community. The real-time collection of data through a mesh network in a mass casualty drill was shown to approximately triple the number of times patients that were triaged compared with the traditional paper triage system.

White Paper Report of the RAD-AID Conference on International Radiology for Developing Countries: Identifying Challenges, Opportunities, and Strategies for Imaging Services in the Developing World

The RAD-AID Conference on International Radiology for Developing Countries was an assembly of individuals and organizations interested in improving access to medical imaging services in developing countries where the availability of radiology has been inadequate for both patient care and public health programs. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss data, experiences, and models pertaining to radiology in the developing world and to evaluate potential opportunities for future collaboration. Conference participants included radiologists, technologists, faculty members of academic medical institutions, and leadership of nongovernmental organizations involved in international health care and social entrepreneurship. Four main themes from the conference are presented in this white paper as important factors for the implementation and optimization of radiology in the developing world: (1) ensuring the economic sustainability of radiologic services through financial and administrative training support of health care personnel; (2) designing, testing, and deploying clinical strategies adapted for regions with limited resources; (3) structuring and improving the role of American radiology residents interested in global health service projects; and (4) implementing information technology models to support digital imaging in the developing world.

Integration of Triage and Biomedical Devices for Continuous, Real-Time, Automated Patient Monitoring

We have developed a patient triage and monitoring system to facilitate effectiveness patient care during emergency medical situations. This system includes: 1) electronic triage tags, 2) location sensors, 3) vital sign sensors, and 4) robust ad-hoc mesh networking software. This paper summarizes our development of continuous, automated, real-time biomedical sensors and software for use by emergency responders during chaotic pre-hospital settings.

Reply by the authors to the discussion by M. Zhdanov

The work described in our paper is an inverse source problem using a back propagation approach to reconstruct the field distribution below the surface based on surface field measurements. The algorithm we developed is consistent with quasi‐static diffusion field conditions and uses spatial transforms to reconstruct the below surface image. The result is an efficient method of identifying the location and orientation of underground objects within the near field of excitation coils on the surface.