When you are in the business of saving lives, every minute counts. Immediate transmission of patient information to doctors, surgeons, specialists, paramedics, ambulance services and others in the healthcare ecosystem, can save precious minutes, and hence lives. AMDL Health, a leading provider of medical equipment and devices, is addressing this need through an application called eTraq for BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.

“Providing real-time critical patient information to enable quick diagnostics is the goal of the eTraq Application for the BlackBerry PlayBook,” informed Arindam Sen, CEO, Advanced Micronic Devices.

Advanced Micronic Devices healthcare division or AMDL Health, is a leading provider of medical equipment and devices, and a group company of Opto Circuits (India). Developed by i2iTelesolutions, the eTraq Application allows medical practitioners to use a BlackBerry PlayBook to remotely access multiple patients’ physiological parameters collected through eTraq Transport Monitors --- portable, light weight units that provide 5-parameter monitoring.

Through the BlackBerry PlayBook and eTraq application, doctors can access local patient monitors connected to the hospital’s Central Monitoring System (CMS). The CMS receives data from local patient monitors and can display a patient’s vital information in real time to care providers. It archives the data for compliance and analysis, and monitors the incoming data for anomalies, and displays alarm messages. The solution is also used by ambulance services, where a patient’s condition can be analyzed by the physician ahead of arrival at the emergency facility.

So eTraq, an ICU monitoring application, can help doctors make timely decisions by eliminating the need for the doctor's physical presence at the place where the medical reports are generated.

The application warns the doctor if a patient’s health suddenly deteriorates. If the doctor or specialist is not on location, then he can come on a video call and chat with the team that is attending to the patient

Annie Mathew, Head of Alliances and Developer Relations in India, RIM

Annie Mathew, Head of Alliances and Developer Relations in India for Research In Motion said, “The application offers in-built alerts as it monitors a patient’s health. So it warns the doctor if a patient’s health suddenly deteriorates. If the doctor or specialist is not on location, then he can come on a video call and chat with the team that is attending to the patient. Alternatively, he could use the BlackBerry Messenger. So the underlying aspect is how the various partners have taken up a unified platform of BlackBerry and integrate video and text chat with the main ICU monitoring application (eTraq). This is facilitated by the fact that RIM has opened APIs for BBM and enabled push API features. And developers have been quick to incorporate these in their applications.”