Overview#
A paramedic team responding to a road traffic collision in a rural area with no mobile signal opens the ePCR module on a ruggedised tablet. They document the patient's mechanism of injury, vital signs, triage category, and administered medications entirely offline. When the ambulance enters network coverage two kilometres from the hospital, the record synchronises automatically and a pre-alert reaches the receiving emergency department before the patient arrives, allowing the trauma team to assemble and a resuscitation bay to be prepared.
The Emergency Patient Care Records (ePCR) module provides field medics, paramedics, and emergency first responders with a clinically structured, offline-first workspace for documenting patient encounters from first contact through definitive-care handover. It supports routine EMS operations, mass casualty triage, and coordinated multi-agency responses, ensuring that no clinical data is lost due to connectivity gaps and that receiving facilities always have accurate, timely patient information.
Key Features#
- Offline-First Capture: Full clinical documentation, triage scoring, and treatment logging operate without an active network connection, with automatic bidirectional synchronisation when connectivity is restored.
- Hospital Pre-Alerts: Critical patient data, estimated time of arrival, and resource requirements are transmitted to the receiving emergency department before the ambulance arrives, enabling the trauma team to prepare.
- Mass Casualty Triage Support: Supports rapid triage tagging using START and SALT protocols, with bulk patient tracking and a shared real-time common operating picture for incident command.
- Clinical Decision Support: Built-in clinical guidelines, weight-based drug dosage calculators, and contraindication alerts support evidence-based care under field conditions.
- Wearable and Monitor Integration: Connects directly to vital signs monitors and wearable physiological sensors so that continuous telemetry flows automatically into the patient record without manual transcription.
- Structured Handover Narratives: Generates a structured MIST (Mechanism, Injuries, Signs, Treatment) handover report at point of care transfer, reducing verbal handover errors.
- Multi-Agency Record Sharing: Patient records can be transferred seamlessly between EMS agencies, fire and rescue medical teams, and military forward aid stations operating under different command structures.
- Audit Trail and Chain of Custody: Every clinical entry is timestamped and attributed, preserving an unbroken audit trail from scene arrival through hospital reception for governance and legal purposes.
Use Cases#
- Rural and Remote EMS Operations: Paramedics document complete patient encounters in areas with no mobile coverage, with records synchronising automatically as the vehicle returns to network range.
- Mass Casualty Incidents: First responders triage and track large numbers of casualties simultaneously, with incident command receiving live patient counts and acuity breakdowns to direct resources.
- Military and Tactical Medic Operations: Forward medics operating in denied or degraded communications environments maintain full clinical records that synchronise when communications are re-established with a field surgical team.
- Inter-Agency Handovers: A patient transferred from a volunteer first responder unit to a state ambulance service carries a complete, structured record that the receiving crew can read immediately on their own device.
- Major Sporting and Public Events: Event medical teams use the module to manage patient flow, track presentations over time, and coordinate ambulance diversions with nearby hospitals during peak demand.
Integration#
The ePCR module is designed to operate as part of a broader emergency response platform. It shares incident context with command and despatch functions so that patient counts and acuity levels flow directly into resource allocation decisions. Records can be exported to hospital electronic patient record systems and national EMS data repositories using standard clinical interchange formats. The module also receives dispatch information, so pre-populated incident details reduce data-entry burden on arriving crews. Where a communications gateway is present, pre-alerts are routed over the same secure channel used by other field modules, avoiding the need for separate telephony.
Open Standards#
- HL7 FHIR R4 (HL7 FHIR Release 4): Patient records, observations, and medication administrations are structured as FHIR resources, enabling direct exchange with hospital electronic patient record systems and national health information networks.
- SNOMED CT: Clinical findings, procedures, and medication codes are expressed in SNOMED CT to ensure unambiguous, interoperable clinical terminology across agencies and jurisdictions.
- NEMSIS 3 (National Emergency Medical Services Information System): EMS patient care report data elements align with the NEMSIS 3 data dictionary, supporting submission to national and state EMS registries.
- Common Alerting Protocol (CAP, OASIS standard): Hospital pre-alert notifications are structured as CAP messages, allowing receiving systems to parse and act on alerts programmatically without human transcription.
- NENA i3 (NENA-STA-010): Integration with next-generation 9-1-1 and 1-1-2 call-handling infrastructure uses the NENA i3 standard for location and incident data exchange between despatch and field units.
- ISO/IEC 27001: Information security controls governing the storage and transmission of patient health data are aligned with the ISO/IEC 27001 management framework.
- GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679): All patient data handling, consent recording, and cross-border transfer controls comply with GDPR requirements, with data residency configurable per jurisdiction.
- IHE PCC (Patient Care Coordination) Technical Framework: Structured clinical document exchange with hospital systems follows IHE PCC profiles, ensuring consistent document semantics at the point of handover.
Availability#
- Enterprise Plan: Included
- Professional Plan: Available as an optional add-on module; offline sync and mass casualty triage features are included at this tier.
Last Reviewed: 2026-05-26