ST. LOUIS, May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- The St. Louis Metropolitan Medical
Response System (MMRS) is officially "live," and Raytheon's Emergency Patient
Tracking System (EPTS) is now used by the St. Louis Fire Department's EMS to
process patients being transported to hospitals in St. Louis and surrounding
areas.
The EPTS provides rapid communication of patient information from the
casualty site by using wireless personal digital assistants connected to a
central database accessible over the Internet. The bar-code technology -- off-
the-shelf and similar to what UPS(TM) and FedEx(R) use -- provides the medical
staff with casualty information while enroute to ensure that any one hospital
is not overwhelmed.
"The EPTS gives St. Louis the first known Regional system to track
patients in the wake of natural or man-made disaster," said Dr. Jeffrey
Lowell, head of the St. Louis MMRS. "The EPTS exceeded our expectations on
the ability to track patients in the event of a Multi-Casualty Incident
(MCI)."
In the past two months, St. Louis' MMRS conducted numerous demonstrations
and tests in which the EPTS logged in more than 600 patients through nine fire
departments and five hospitals. The system went live after a final test
exercise on April 30 when 60 patients from multiple sites were taken to four
hospitals in St. Louis. The hospitals participating in the exercise quickly
scanned patient bar codes, updated patient status in the system, and also
accounted for walk-in patients. Emergency managers at multiple locations,
including the MMRS' medical communications center, monitored the incident and
made recommendations to coordinate the response.
To increase success and usage of the MMRS, representatives from 35
hospitals in the St. Louis metropolitan area signed the "Hospital Emergency
Mutual Aid Memorandum of Understanding," contract in March agreeing to provide
mutual aid at the time of a medical disaster.
"With its EPTS, a key component of the communications portion of the MMRS,
Raytheon's contribution to multi-casualty incidents will be very significant
in saving lives and coordinating local area hospital response to such
emergencies," Lowell added.
Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN), with 2002 sales of $16.8 billion, is an
industry leader in defense, government and commercial electronics, space,
information technology, technical services, and business and special mission
aircraft. With headquarters in Lexington, Mass., Raytheon employs more than
76,000 people worldwide.
Contact:
Darci Bushey
703.849.1568
SOURCE Raytheon Company
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Related links:
http://www.raytheon.com
CONTACT:
Darci Bushey of Raytheon Company,
+1-703-849-1568
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