How to add e-health to the first aid kit

E-health is becoming an increasingly important part of healthcare. But can it help in situations calling for first aid? If so, what e-health solutions should your first aid kit contain?

The CDC’s suggested contents for a first aid kit include basic tools, supplies and one diagnostic aid—a thermometer. The knowledge required to employ these tools, however, is simply assumed to be present, either from the user’s life experience or through formal first aid training. E-health can help compensate for knowledge gaps around first aid.

How it might best do so will depend on the job at hand. For home medical care—one use of the kit—people already turn to the Internet for information: In 2013 43% of Britons looked for medical information online and 35% of Americans said they had used the web to help make a diagnosis. The vast information resources of the Internet have already replaced the more restricted, if potentially more reliable, printed medical guides as the pervasive health adviser for families.

But what of the kit’s second job, emergency stabilisation before additional, more experienced care arrives? Here, mobile phones may provide an answer.

Dozens of apps are available, offering quickly accessible first aid information—including for pet injuries. Not all are equal in their quality, of course, although some come from very reputable sources. The Red Cross, in particular, has a well-regarded, free app with a wide range of general first aid information as well as emergency contact details localised for 17 countries.

The added utility of such apps in an emergency is decision support: Many include question-driven protocols that provide advice on care and, where needed, integrated, one-button telephone dialling of emergency services. As good as they are, however, apps have their limitations: A video may help in wrapping a bad sprain, but saving someone from choking requires immediate attention. For this situation—and for CPR—training remains the optimal answer.

Those with such training should therefore consider adding geolocation tools, thus expanding everyone’s first aid kit in the process. Pulsepoint, for example, alerts registered users of nearby heart attacks so that they can provide a first response.

E-health, so far, has more expanded than revolutionised the first aid kit. Bigger changes may soon be on the way. For decades, the only home diagnostic tool has been the thermometer. The Qualcomm Tricorder Prize is changing that by awarding $10m for the best multi-purpose consumer diagnostic tool. Enhanced by such technologies, e-health may find itself a core component of the first aid kit.

Last week, Scanadu, one of the ten finalists, announced the first shipment of its Scout device—a sensor that, when applied to the forehead, reads temperature, blood pressure and oxygen levels. It can also perform an electrocardiogram.

E-health first aid may just be around the corner.

This post first appeared on GE LookAhead.  Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Dr Paul Kielstra is a contibutor at GE LookAhead.

Image: A woman uses her Apple iPhone. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson.