EmergiLink

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Emergency Medical Service personnel and firefighters rely completely on patients or their family members to provide vital personal and medical history information. In an emergency situation, patients and family members experience an extreme amount of stress which can lead to crucial information being forgotten, more time on-scene of the incident, and delayed transport of the patient to a hospital. The omission or delay of important information during an emergency can result in medical errors and even death.

EmergiLink teamed up with Cogent Systems, based in Pasadena, California, to provide wireless fingerprint identification technology that puts life saving medical info into the hands of EMS providers. An "Informed Response" is given to EMS personnel with this EmergiLink technology which includes critical, updated medical info, giving first responders the ability to make emergency decisions quickly, smoothly and as accurately as possible. According to EmergiLink, this product is an internet solution coupled with a leading edge biometric fingerprinting product that helps save lives by giving hospitals, paramedics and firefighters up to date information, on scene, when responding to a subscriber's medical emergency situation.

According to Brett Hill, CEO of EmergiLink and retired firefighter, this program has been designed to be used in the community. Hill explains that EMS providers host the program to the citizens that they serve and at home, the citizens upload their own information through a secure online membership program. Medical conditions, allergies to medications, recent hospitalizations and other pertinent medical information that emergency responders need to treat the patient efficiently, is all entered by the citizen through the online program. Once the citizen has created their profile, it is then in the 100% secure EmergiLink database, where first responders will be able to access the citizen's information on the the existing equipment that they have.

"EmergiLink works very well with computers that are in use now with EMS providers. Many use the Panasonic Toughbook. That Toughbook will sit in the cab of many of these apparatus - ambulances, fire engines, fire trucks - and they serve as a mobile data terminal. So, they'll get that information from dispatch on the patient that they are responding on, but they'll also be able to, through a secure browser, access the information with EmergiLink," adds Brett Hill.

Cogent Systems originally helped develop this technology for crime fighting and employed some of the same technology currently used by law enforcement to perform electronic fingerprint scanning in identifying a suspect when designing the fire and EMS application.  The company is excited to see the potential of this system in helping to save lives. Teresa Wu, Director of Marketing for Cogent Systems, stated, "We started with the law enforcement community first, and then with government agencies, so our technology has been used around the world to solve crimes, protect our borders, detour fraud, to make sure an applicant does not apply twice for the same benefit, and so this is a natural extension for Cogent to evolve beyond public safety in saving lives."

While EmergiLink is still in beta testing, it is the hope that this unique system will soon become a vital part of fire departments and emergency responders nationwide.

For more information on the EmergiLink product, please visit their company website at www.EmergiLink.com.


Author:J.R. Ybarra - Video, Renee Marquart - Text