A new app aims to enhance the quality of paramedic services in the province.
Administrative Director with the Paramedics Association of Manitoba Eric Glass, says it combines over 100 different protocols that paramedics might need to know in different situations.
Some of the features of the app include better location services to aid in finding patients, locating the nearest-by hospital, and determining medicine dosages based on the patient's weight.
"It brings all those protocols into the one easy, accessible application that allows you to navigate from protocol to protocol without having to close one PDF and opening another one."
Glass believes the app will do wonders for the delivery of emergency services in rural Manitoba.
"With the advent of the Medical Transportation Coordination Centre in Brandon, it isn't always a crew or an ambulance that's located in a certain community that's responding to calls. In terms of being able to locate hospitals and conversion factors, it takes the tools and makes them more accessible, puts them in one location, and makes it easier for them to use."
As well, Glass says the app's development is part of a larger evolution of the role technology plays in healthcare.
"You'll see doctors carrying smartphones and tablets and accessing information on the go just about everywhere you look now, so we just thought it might be valuable to paramedics to be able to access that type of information on their smartphones."
Glass says the app should be widely available for paramedics by mid-to-late June. However, Prairie Mountain Health says they will have to do a thorough review of the app before they start to use it.
