Victim Tracking and Tracing System

During disasters with mass casualties’ the information flow between rescue workers, the dispatching centre, admitting hospitals and other parties involved in the rescue chain can determine life or death for the victims. The Victim Tracking and Tracing System (ViTTS) is a tri-national project initiated by Dr. Luc Taal (University Medical Centre Utrecht - The Netherlands), Prof. Dr. Luc Beaucourt (University Hospital Antwerp - Belgium) and Dr. Martin von Bergh, MBA (Von Bergh Global Medical Consulting - Germany), together with several commercial parties such as Orion Health, Cisco Systems and Aeroscout, to improve the information flow and optimise rescue processes by using the latest available IT and position identification technology embedded in a standard working procedure. The Victim Tracking and Tracing System is based on recording and exchanging information about injured victims by and for the various organisations within the disaster management chain. It enables on-site creation of wireless communication networks, digital registration and "tagging" of victim data and continuous tracking of the victims position and treatment.
Until now, due to a lack of electronic communication at disaster sites, interaction within the rescue chain is slow and therefore causes critical delays. Non-documentation of the transfer of victims to the admitting hospitals can lead to an overload of hospitals close to the disaster site. Additionally, the police, government organisations, or victims’ relatives can obtain information quickly.
In essence, the ViTTS consists of a Mobile Access Router that feeds data from rescue workers using hand-held PDAs, via GPRS, digital radio or directly by satellite into a central database. The data, which is collected by the rescue personnel includes a unique identification number (barcode), the victim’s name, digital photograph, a colour-coded treatment priority and to reduce documentation time: a dictated summary of the patient’s medical condition. After that, the compressed and the encrypted data package is being sent to the database. The dispatching personnel can now type the voice messages into the system immediately, so all patient data is available in text form shortly after being collected without wasting rescue workers time on-site.

Additionally to a colour-coded priority card the victim is equipped with a global positioning transmitter (GPS) or RFID-tag to automatically indicate the victim’s location after transport to the treatment facility. Every location of each victim is transmitted via GPRS to the central database. Is the injured person still at the accident site or en route to hospital? Which hospital? What is its capacity? What is the patient’s profile? These questions can be answered and analysed in real-time, by accessing the central database. This database, called “Concerto”, was designed by Orion Health specifically for the use as a disaster management tool. Different parties involved in the rescue chain can access the database with different authorizations. Accustomed profiles guarantee the display of exactly that information needed with the ability to add valuable information. With the help of the stored photographs, family members who heard about the disaster can identify their so far “nameless” relatives by searching through the picture database on the central server at a local police station.
The system allows simultaneous monitoring of several different disaster sites at the same time – an important advantage if considering recent terror attacks where the multiple occurrence of mass casualties could not be optimally monitored and co-ordinated, so that it was hardly possible to make a reliable assessment of where rescue teams were needed and where they could be withdrawn.
Now that in-country trials have proven the functionality of the support system, the Victim Tracking and Tracing technology can be implemented and used in real disaster scenarios. In sum ViTTS enables better coordination and use of rescue resources; prompt information for relatives and patient data for hospitals to prepare for a victim before the ambulance arrives. In the future the consortium of the ViTTS project is working on a standardisation of the system across Europe, so that victim tracking and tracing can occur across borders.
Although we might hope never to be forced to use a tool like ViTTS, the reality shows that in future years the need for intelligent computer and IT based technology for disaster management will increase and because we are able to serve that need with solutions like ViTTS the number of people surviving disasters will increase.