Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Cabell County Adopts New Mobile Technology to Access, Share Life-Saving Electronic Patient Records

In Motion Technology, the leader in mobile networking technologies that efficiently connect and manage equipment, information and people in the field, today announced that Cabell County Emergency Medical Services of West Virginia has adopted an innovative solution to track vehicles, improve communications, and meet new electronic patient data-sharing requirements.

“After the influx of Katrina refugees in 2005, West Virginia’s emergency medical services struggled to access patient information,” said Cabell County EMS Systems Administrator Joseph Whitt. “Today, In Motion Technology allows our paramedics to send and receive a patient’s medical history, vital signs and other information, so they can administer the appropriate care quickly and save lives.”

Cabell EMS has deployed In Motion Technology’s onBoard Mobile Gateway, which turns each emergency vehicle into a secure, mobile, communications hotspot. During a call, the Gateway allows paramedics to enter medical data onto laptops, which wirelessly and securely upload information. The Gateway also enables precision GPS tracking of each EMS vehicle, allowing headquarters personnel to see vehicle locations during emergency calls and long-distance transports across the county’s rural service area.

“Before deploying Gateways in our fleet, we had an ambulance go over an embankment on its way to an emergency call in a remote area,” said Whitt. “It was difficult for us to locate the vehicle, and required us to dispatch several additional units. With In Motion, we are now able to track our vehicles, ensure the safety of our crews, and get to incident scenes quickly.”

Cabell County EMS provides life-saving rescue transportation and technical services to 96,000 people in a 286-square-mile service area in rural West Virginia. Answering more than 23,000 calls per year, the service employs 110 full and part time staff and operates a fleet of 16 ambulances located throughout the county and city of Huntington.

“The demands of a mountainous, rural service area require technologies that are rugged and adaptable,” said Whitt. “In Motion’s Gateway can send and receive data over multiple networks, a capability that will be a great benefit to us in rural areas where a wireless signal might be hard to come by.”

“We are pleased that Cabell EMS has joined the growing ranks of rural healthcare organizations that are discovering the benefits of the onBoard Mobile Gateway,” said In Motion Technology CEO Leonard Hordyk. “We are committed to helping these services find new and innovative ways to utilize technologies that help save lives, even in the most challenging service areas.”