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BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making
Published in: BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 1/2020

Open Access 01-12-2020 | Triage | Research article

Thailand medical mobile application for patients triage base on criteria based dispatch protocol

Authors: Krongkarn Sutham, Pattaraporn Khuwuthyakorn, Orawit Thinnukool

Published in: BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making | Issue 1/2020

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Abstract

Background

Before patients are admitted into the emergency department, it is important to undertake a pre-hospital 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 (IDC), which will cause the over or underutilisation of emergency resources, such as rescue teams, community hospitals and emergency medical volunteers.

Methods

A usability system design, together with a reliability test, was applied to develop an application to optimise the pre-hospital process, specifically to sort patients, using an IDC to improve the request for emergency resources. The triage mobile application was developed on both iOS and Android operating systems to support patient triage based on Criteria Based Dispatch (CBD). The 25 main symptom categories covered by CBD were used to design and develop the application, and 12 emergency medical staff, including doctors and nurses, were asked to test the system in the aspects of triage protocol correction, triage reliability, usability and user satisfaction.

Results

The results of testing the proposed triage application were compared with the time used to triage by experienced staff and it was found that, in non-trauma cases, it was faster and more effective to use the application for emergency operations and to correct the IDC code representation.

Conclusions

The triage application will be utilised to support the pre-hospital process and to classify patients’ conditions before they are admitted to the Emergency Department (ED). The application is suitable for users who are not medical emergency staff. Patients with non-trauma symptoms may be a suitable group to use the application in terms of time used to identify IDC for their own symptoms. The use of the application can be beneficial for those who wish to self-identify their symptoms before requesting medical services.
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Metadata
Title
Thailand medical mobile application for patients triage base on criteria based dispatch protocol
Authors
Krongkarn Sutham
Pattaraporn Khuwuthyakorn
Orawit Thinnukool
Publication date
01-12-2020
Publisher
BioMed Central
Keyword
Triage
Published in
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making / Issue 1/2020
Electronic ISSN: 1472-6947
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-020-1075-6

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