Why Flight Emergency Medical Kits Need A Digital Health Upgrade

A few weeks ago a doctor used an Apple Watch to aid an elderly woman who suffered a medical emergency on a flight. NHS doctor Rashid Riaz, from Hereford, borrowed the device from a flight attendant to check the patient’s oxygen levels. “The Apple Watch helped me find out the patient had low oxygen saturation,” the medic explained. Later, he also called on all airlines to consider having emergency physician kits as standard, which would ideally include tools to take basic measurements, diabetic and blood pressure meters, and an oxygen saturation monitor. We all know that aircraft have some medical supplies on board, but it is kind of surprising that something as simple as a pulse oximeter is not part of it. But how did we get here in the first place? And how to proceed to better utilise portable technologies of the 21st century? This is the topic we discuss here. The curious case of flight medicine As flight transitioned from an experimental hobby by a small group of daredevils to a huge, regulated industry, the field of aviation medicine evolved in parallel. It started with pioneers like Dr. Benjamin Rush, the only physician who signed the U.S. Constitution and an avid supporter of ballooning, who wrote that “the time may come when this mode of sailing will be employed…with as much safety as sailing upon the water, and with much more advantage.” He proved to be right. But we could also mention French physiologist Claude Bernard, the ‘...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Future of Medicine Health Sensors & Trackers portable diagnostics emergency medicine Healthcare technology flight medicine wearables Source Type: blogs