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Protocol Insights

EIDS Tool: The Early Surveillance System for Widespread Transmission of Infectious Disease

AEDR Editorial Team

Oct 17, 2020|Protocol Insights

In 2003 the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch® (IAED™) created the Severe Respiratory Infection (SRI) Tool in response to the SARS pandemic that year, when multiple cases were reported in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Then in 2009, an electronic version of the tool was developed for ProQA® dispatch software and deployed in multiple dispatch agencies during the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic. This tool was later modified in response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and became what is known today as the Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance (EIDS) Tool. The EIDS Tool enables EMS...

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Protocol 36: Making the Most of Your Limited EMS Resources During a Pandemic

AEDR Editorial Team

Jun 10, 2020|Protocol Insights

During a pandemic, dispatch agencies need a robust triage tool when emergency services become stressed from high call loads, workforce degradation, and hospital saturation. This tool needs to be scalable at the local level so that it can escalated and de-escalated at the discretion of local EMS authorities. The purpose of Protocol 36 is to allow Emergency Medical Dispatchers to identify—at the point of call intake—those patients that are most likely COVID-19 symptomatic, and then triage them within a single dispatch protocol that allows the most efficient and effective use of pandemic-related...

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