A veteran paramedic who responded to the CTV building collapse during the Christchurch earthquake and the Al Noor Mosque on March 15 has helped create a new app designed for mass casualty emergencies.
Former St John paramedic Dean Brown was one of the first on the scene after the catastrophic CTV collapse and also the first ambulance officer to run into Al Noor mosque under armed cover. He said it is “chaos” when these events occur.
“As we know with the earthquakes, Whakaari/White Island, the mosque attacks, while there is some sense of understanding, its very fractured across all the agencies involved.”
That’s why Brown designed the Triage app, in collaboration with emergency department specialist Suzi Hamilton. The system allows mass casualty victims to be tagged and their medical status entered into an app.
The information is then uploaded to a portal that updates all emergency services and hospitals on the number of victims, the nature of their injuries and where they are being sent for further treatment.
Hamilton, who was in the emergency department on the day of the Canterbury earthquakes, said the system would have made a huge difference.
“When you know how many patients are coming, when they’re coming in, what kind of injuries they’ve got, you can prepare.”
She added: “The silver lining of being involved in those awful events is you have this chance to make it better.”
The Triage app has been developed by a software company set up by one of the victims killed in the mosque shooting – Atta Elayyan.
An emotional Brown told 1News that he triaged the software developer on March 15.
“When I found out that he was one of the two gentlemen that started the company – it felt, is providence the right word?”
Brown and Hamilton hope presenting their idea to the World Health Organisation will see the system adopted globally. It is already being used in Portugal, Brown said.
“The feedback was that this is the go-to tool for mass casualty, which really made my heart feel better about what we’re trying to do.
“We couldn’t save Atta, but I think there are others we can.”
