Abstract:Background: Before patients are admitted into the emergency department, it is important to undertake a prehospital process, both in terms of treatment performance and a request for resources from an emergency unit. The existing system to triage patients in Thailand is not functioning to its full capacity in either the primary medical system or pre-hospital treatment with shortcomings in the areas of speed, features, and appropriate systems. There is a high possibility of issuing a false Initial Dispatch Code (… Show more
“…Each coloured point on the map represents the level of IDC according to Table 2 . Moreover, these results can be classified by start date to end date and by patients’ symptoms covering the 25 symptom categories of Sutham et al [ 14 ]. Fig.…”
Section: Resultsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The purpose of this research was to extend and revise the Triagist mobile application [ 14 ] to support the operation of dispatch centres or rescue teams based on a user-centred design and users’ feedback. Design thinking methodology [ 33 , 42 ] was used to identify the problems and design a graphical user interface and appropriate functions to support the practical operation of dispatch centres and rescue teams in Thailand.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Healthcare applications based on smart technology have become extremely popular in emergency medical settings in several countries. Many systems have been developed to enable first responders or emergency staff to rapidly assess patients’ condition in order to triage them at each stage of healthcare management [ 11 – 14 ] because triage is the key to effective emergency medicine management [ 15 ]. The triage in healthcare management consists of three stages, namely, pre-hospital triage (stage 1), which involves dispatching an ambulance and pre-hospital care resources, triage at the scene (stage 2) by first response emergency staff who attend the patient, and triage on arrival at the hospital or emergency unit (stage 3) [ 16 ].…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Sutham and her team [ 14 ] recently developed a Thai mobile application to triage patients in support of Thailand Science Research and Innovation (TSRI), using the emergency Severity Index (ESI) as the standard of classification in the application. This system was suitable for rescue teams, community hospitals and emergency medical volunteers to triage patients.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Sutham et al [ 14 ] recently developed a triage medical application called Triagist, which can be used to classify the level of emergency based on an IDC. The Triagist can be used as a practical tool, as well as an educational one, for new emergency staff who lack comprehensive emergency medical knowledge and skills.…”
Background
The Thai medical application for patient triage, namely Triagist, is an mHealth application designed to support the pre-hospital process. However, since the functions of the application that are necessary for the pre-hospital process have been found not to be fully developed, the addition of a back-end system has been considered to increase its performance and usability.
Objective
To determine the ability of the previous version to effectively manage the pre-hospital process and analyse the current problems with the pre-hospital operation. Therefore, the new system was developed to support the connection of dispatch centres or operational centres to the Triagist mobile application and system evaluation.
Method
Design thinking methodology was used to analyse, design and develop a patient triage system to support the pre-hospital process in Thailand based on users’ requirements. 68 active members of the rescue teams and emergency medical staff in Chiang Mai and Lampang provinces were recruited to test the reliability of the system based on a prototype application.
Results
The new medical mobile application for patient triage in Thailand was validated for use due to containing the two essential functions of Initial Dispatch Code (IDC) geolocation and IDC management. When the system was tested by emergency staff who were responsible for using it, those with the least experience were found to use it better than their highly experienced colleagues. Moreover, in cases where the system had been implemented, it was found to determine the frequency of symptoms, the time period during which cases occurred, and the density of cases in each area.
Conclusion
This system, which has been developed based on the use of smart technology, will play an important role in supporting emergency services in Thailand by enhancing the efficiency of the pre-hospital process. Emergency centres will receive IDC information from the geolocation system so that they can determine patients’ location without undue delay. Emergency services will be able to rapidly prepare the necessary resources and administrative tasks will be supported by linking the dispatch centre to central rescue teams.
“…Each coloured point on the map represents the level of IDC according to Table 2 . Moreover, these results can be classified by start date to end date and by patients’ symptoms covering the 25 symptom categories of Sutham et al [ 14 ]. Fig.…”
Section: Resultsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The purpose of this research was to extend and revise the Triagist mobile application [ 14 ] to support the operation of dispatch centres or rescue teams based on a user-centred design and users’ feedback. Design thinking methodology [ 33 , 42 ] was used to identify the problems and design a graphical user interface and appropriate functions to support the practical operation of dispatch centres and rescue teams in Thailand.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Healthcare applications based on smart technology have become extremely popular in emergency medical settings in several countries. Many systems have been developed to enable first responders or emergency staff to rapidly assess patients’ condition in order to triage them at each stage of healthcare management [ 11 – 14 ] because triage is the key to effective emergency medicine management [ 15 ]. The triage in healthcare management consists of three stages, namely, pre-hospital triage (stage 1), which involves dispatching an ambulance and pre-hospital care resources, triage at the scene (stage 2) by first response emergency staff who attend the patient, and triage on arrival at the hospital or emergency unit (stage 3) [ 16 ].…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Sutham and her team [ 14 ] recently developed a Thai mobile application to triage patients in support of Thailand Science Research and Innovation (TSRI), using the emergency Severity Index (ESI) as the standard of classification in the application. This system was suitable for rescue teams, community hospitals and emergency medical volunteers to triage patients.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Sutham et al [ 14 ] recently developed a triage medical application called Triagist, which can be used to classify the level of emergency based on an IDC. The Triagist can be used as a practical tool, as well as an educational one, for new emergency staff who lack comprehensive emergency medical knowledge and skills.…”
Background
The Thai medical application for patient triage, namely Triagist, is an mHealth application designed to support the pre-hospital process. However, since the functions of the application that are necessary for the pre-hospital process have been found not to be fully developed, the addition of a back-end system has been considered to increase its performance and usability.
Objective
To determine the ability of the previous version to effectively manage the pre-hospital process and analyse the current problems with the pre-hospital operation. Therefore, the new system was developed to support the connection of dispatch centres or operational centres to the Triagist mobile application and system evaluation.
Method
Design thinking methodology was used to analyse, design and develop a patient triage system to support the pre-hospital process in Thailand based on users’ requirements. 68 active members of the rescue teams and emergency medical staff in Chiang Mai and Lampang provinces were recruited to test the reliability of the system based on a prototype application.
Results
The new medical mobile application for patient triage in Thailand was validated for use due to containing the two essential functions of Initial Dispatch Code (IDC) geolocation and IDC management. When the system was tested by emergency staff who were responsible for using it, those with the least experience were found to use it better than their highly experienced colleagues. Moreover, in cases where the system had been implemented, it was found to determine the frequency of symptoms, the time period during which cases occurred, and the density of cases in each area.
Conclusion
This system, which has been developed based on the use of smart technology, will play an important role in supporting emergency services in Thailand by enhancing the efficiency of the pre-hospital process. Emergency centres will receive IDC information from the geolocation system so that they can determine patients’ location without undue delay. Emergency services will be able to rapidly prepare the necessary resources and administrative tasks will be supported by linking the dispatch centre to central rescue teams.
The main objective of this paper is to review and analysis of the state of the art regarding triage applications (apps) for health emergencies. This research is based on a systematic review of the literature in scientific databases from 2010 to early 2021, following a prism methodology. In addition, a Google Play Store search of the triage apps found in the literature was performed for further evaluation. A total of 26 relevant papers were obtained for this study, of which 13 apps were identified. After searching for each of these apps in the Google Play Store platform, only 2 of them were obtained, and these were subsequently evaluated together with another app obtained from the link provided in the corresponding paper. In the analysis carried out, it was detected that from 2019 onwards there has been an increase in research interest in this area, since the papers obtained from this year onwards represent 38.5% of the relevant papers. This increase may be caused by the need for early selection of the most serious patients in such difficult times for the health service. According to the review carried out, an increase in mobile app research focused on Emergency Triage and a decrease in app studies for triage catastrophe have been identified. In this study it was also observed that despite the existence of many researches in this sense, only 3 apps contained in them are accessible. "TRIAGIST" does not allow the entry of an unidentified user, "Major Trauma Triage Tool" presents negative comments from users who have used it and "ESITriage" lacks updates to improve its performance.
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