Automated Vital Signs Scanning for Trauma Patients in Transit
Internal hemorrhaging is a life-threatening risk for trauma patients, and every moment toward a correct assessment saves live. To that end, a research group headed by clinicians at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed the “APPRAISE” system (Automated Processing of the Physiological Registry for Assessment of Injury Severity) to assess interactions of three vital signs into patterns for determining triage. According to this piece: “the pattern-recognition capability provided by the APPRAISE system — which was able to simultaneously combine measures of blood pressure with those of heart rate, breathing and the amount of blood pumped with each heartbeat — successfully identified 75 to 80 percent of patients with life-threatening bleeding, compared with 50 percent who were identified by standard clinical practice. Notifications provided by the system would have been available within 10 minutes of initial monitoring and as much as 20 to 40 minutes before patients’ arrival at the trauma centers.” MORE
Image Credit: US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command