Annals of Disaster Medicine

ISSN:1684-193X

Abstract ---To investigate if the use of personal digital assistance (PDA) with wireless transmission could provide more pre-hospital information before arrival to the emergency departments, we implemented the PDA system with wireless transmission and web-based recording system in the EMS of Taipei City since August 1st 2002. All pre-hospital records were posted in PDA software. The PDA was hanged on the legs of the EMTs. The time elapse from information received to the arrival to the ER was recorded. The completeness of pre-hospital recording was evaluated by two independent physicians. In addition, a questionnaire for EMTs was used to evaluate the possible difficulties in PDA use. There were 145 pre-hospital records enrolled in the study. Sixty eight records were posted in PDA files whereas the other 77 records were listed as traditional method. Among the cases used with PDA recordings, the mean time interval between the information received in our institute and arrival to hospital was 1.6+0.3 min. Eight of the 68 files (12%) were incomplete, especially the recording of vital signs (6/8, 75%). On the other hand, 9 of the 77 traditional records were incomplete (12%, P=NS vs. PDA files). According to the questionnaire, lack of personnel operating the PDA (28/35, 80%) and unfamiliarity with PDA processing (22/35, 63%) were the main factors affecting the completeness of PDA files. PDA-based EMT pre-hospital recording may have the benefit of early information received before arrival to the hospital. More humanistic design may be needed to promote the use of the system and its efficiencies.