Medical Briefcase For In-Flight Patient Evaluation

Makarand writes "On average one plane a day makes an unscheduled landing somewhere around the world when a passenger unexpectedly falls ill and requires medical attention. Diversion costs for an airline, related to fuel expenses and cost of putting people in hotels, can be anywhere between $50,000- $100,000 for each diversion. Now Airbus, in collaboration with the French Space agency, has come up with a solution in the form of a satellite-connected medical briefcase to determine if the patient needs urgent medical attention on the ground before making a diversion according to this BBC News article. A crew member with proper training can use the device to complete a medical examination of the patient in 2 minutes and download the data using satellite in real time to a hospital. A diversion is made if the emergency physician feels that the patient needs medical attention on the ground. Airbus believes that as planes get bigger, fuel efficient and fly longer hours with more number of people the chances of someone needing medical attention will increase creating a market for this device."

Comments

Better than nothing, but...

[gammelby]

While not being a physician myself, I still think the usefulness sounds a bit exaggerated:

"In two minutes you have a complete examination of the patient, you send this via the computer to the doctor, who is now able to make a complete assessment of the patient's status."

Especially compared to the data the device actually collects:

A crew member with proper training can now take basic heart, blood, temperature and sugar level readings.

Not much info to provide a complete examination, isn't it?

Re:Better than nothing, but...

[Isldeur]

A crew member with proper training can now take basic heart, blood, temperature and sugar level readings.

Not much info to provide a complete examination, isn't it?

1. Heart Info: Any kind of dysrhythmia as well as immediate signs of heart failure and circulatory collapse (such as any of the kinds of shock).
2. Blood: A vast number of things.
3. Temperature: Fevers? (see 1)
4. Blood sugars: Hyper/Hypoglycaemia. Which sometimes can look quite similar and therefore can be difficult to treat (the treatments are opposite in nature).

I'd say this covers a lot. There's not a lot else you'd do in a general first work-up. Obviously any patient notes could also be sent to the doctor, adding to the clinical picture.

Not equal to MCSEs, I hope.

[SoSueMe]

A crew member with proper training can use the device to complete a medical examination of the patient in 2 minutes

Hopefully this will not be the "proper training" which lets people believe that a newly trained MCSE should have "root" access.

Medical Malpractice

[MattC413]

When I see a situation with people in charge of someone else's medical care in any way, I see the potential for a lawsuit. If the use of these medical kits amount to a medical diagnosis, then the person in charge of administering the diagnosis may be at risk of being sued for malpractice.

With the already sky-high rates of malpractice lawsuits and the incredibly high cost of malpractice insurance, I don't see this a cost effective or practical way to determine if medical care is needed. The random "is there a doctor on the flight" may be much more effective.. or even hiring a doctor for each flight may be more cost effective as well, if one considers all the possible lawsuits from an undertrained flight attendant using a medical device such as this.

Besides, combine the chance of misdiagnosis with the chance that the person doesn't understand how to correctly use the machine (this is a technological device, folks) and it's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

-Matt