Tele-emergency doctor
A tele-emergency doctor treats a medical emergency via telemedicine and regardless of where the emergency occurs, i.e. also on a ship, an offshore platform or as part of the land-based rescue system. However, it has become commonplace that the term tele-emergency doctor is associated with the land-based rescue system. GHC uses this term in a more general sense.
The therapy-free interval – The help period
What’s the problem? An emergency: every second counts! In the German rescue system, there are about 17 million missions per year, including about 2 million with NEF, 5.2 million with RTW and 5.4 million with KTW. The time span between the occurrence of the emergency and the initial treatment by the emergency medical services decisively influences the effectiveness of the treatment (therapy-free interval). With arrival times of up to 20 minutes, the survival rate is 60%; if the rescue service arrives after only 5 minutes, it rises to 85% (cf. Koch; Puhan [1992]). Every shortening of the response time causes the costs to rise progressively: Halving the arrival time quadruples the costs (cf. Riediger [1985]).
More information
An emergency physician is involved in the direct care of the patient in approximately 58% of all emergency calls. In most cases, the emergency physician arrives at the scene after the ambulance. In approx. 15% of cases, this results in a delay of more than 10 min. When emergency physicians are called to the scene, this delay is extended to up to 30 min. During this time, paramedics have been left to their own devices until now. This is just one of the problems in the daily operation of the rescue service.
Source: gbe-bund-01
AescuLink helps!
AescuLink helps to close the therapy-free interval! It enables the emergency doctor to be in live contact with the ambulance as soon as the emergency call arrives, and the treatment of the patient at the scene is guided and monitored by the tele-emergency doctor right from the start. This effectively closes the time gap in treatment for emergency care. During the patient’s transport, all of the patient’s current vital data is transmitted live, and the tele-emergency physician contacts a hospital specialised in the case via AescuLink. The emergency team in the hospital is thus optimally prepared for the arriving patient.
According to the GBA’s results report on the 3-year pilot project TNA Bavaria, in which AescuLink was used in more than 650 emergencies, the therapy-free interval was shortened to an average of 1 minute and 49 seconds, which significantly increased the patient’s chance of survival.
Source: Ergebnisbericht GBA TNA Bayern
Where is the tele-emergency doctor?
If you are planning a TNA project and have not or not yet implemented the tele-emergency doctor service, you can use our telemedicine service. With our partners, we offer the round-the-clock tele-emergency doctor service.
Full integration-Quick start
In order to integrate AescuLink into the specific IT infrastructure of a rescue service, AescuLink works together with other applications. In the case that the ambulance service already has digital deployment protocol (ePCR) software in operation, AescuLink exchanges information with this software and is thus automatically integrated into the IT infrastructure of the ambulance service. Otherwise, AescuLink operates the interface directly with the control center software, for example.
Getting started with comprehensive emergency telemedicine is easy with AescuLink. Even the use of a smartphone with AescuLink, which is equipped with several SIM cards from different providers, makes it possible to implement use cases both in an ambulance and outside the ambulance with one system. Information about further expansion stages with extended functionality can be found as a download in our brochure.
