WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas — Williamson County EMS is rolling out a new app called Pulsara that will give first responders a more effective way of communicating with hospitals. Instead of using their radio systems in an ambulance, they will enter data about a patient into the app and it will notify the hospital.
“Now the medics have the ability to enter exactly the information that they know, that the hospitals need to be able to triage patients. And then, in turn, those hospitals can take a look at it, read it and if they have any questions, they can get back to our medics with that,” said Dan Cohen, captain of clinical practices for Williamson County EMS.
Previously, first responders would communicate through the agency's radio system, but Cohen said the radios can have some problems.
“Unfortunately, when you’re working with the radio and one end of the transmission is garbled or misunderstood, oftentimes you don’t necessarily know that’s the case until you’ve arrived at the emergency room,” Cohen said.
But with this app, hospitals have the ability to confirm information with first responders before they arrive.
“When you’re able to actually read what someone wrote, you have the ability to check back on that app and say, 'Did you mean this?' And you can be a whole lot clearer with one another,” Cohen said.
Using the app also gives medics and hospitals a digital record of these conversations that in the past were not recorded. Cohen said another large draw of the app is the ability to locate patients.
“We’re going to be able to use this for things that hopefully don’t happen very often or ever, like mass casualty incidents where we have lots and lots of patients, or situations where, for example, there’s a large number of people that have to be evacuated, say during a hurricane, and we have to figure out where all those patients went, where they might be going," Cohen said.
But even though they will be primarily relying on the app to communicate, Williamson County EMS officials said they won’t be completely getting rid of the radio systems. They said it’s always important to keep more than one communication system in place in case one of them fails.
Williamson County EMS rolled out a soft launch of the app on Oct. 2, and officials said since then, a majority of hospitals in the area have already started using it. They plan to have it fully integrated by November.