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Foreign Exchange whose staff the delegation also met) from their U.S. counterparts. What does, for one, is training. “They do a lot more. The fact that each hospital does a drill every month is amazing,” says DeTienne. “It’s hard for our hospitals to get an annual drill in sometimes—they’re just so busy and have so many other things on their minds. And to have a national drill annually, that’s just phenomenal. They’re certainly smaller than Montana, but even doing a state drill every year takes a lot of effort and time and commitment. And even though they have more opportunities to practice what they do, they still drill and try to learn every time.” “When they do an exercise or education or training, everyone participates,” says Stein- Spencer. “It’s not just, say, your nursing staff. The other thing that’s impressive, because we really don’t have it routinely in our hospitals, is that they identify things right away. They debrief, and based on lessons learned, they actually implement changes. You don’t hear about budget cuts or that it’s too costly. If they identify a gap, they fi x it. Lots of times we’ll do an after-action report, but not do anything with it. We’ll set those documents up on shelves and subsequently make the same mistakes again.” Drug stockpiles and equipment caches for patient surges of course aren’t uncommon to U.S. hospitals, though amounts on hand and how they’re stored and accessed may differ. “We certainly don’t have anything comparable to the preassembled supply carts designed for the bedside we saw at Rambam,” says John Hick, MD, medical director for bioterrorism and emergency preparedness at Minnesota’s Hennepin County Medical Center. “But to the degree possible, I think most of our hospitals have supplies available for disaster needs.” “I have seen hospitals that have those sorts of surge capabilities and supply caches on hand,” says NASEMSO Program Manager Kathy Robinson, RN. “One of the keys with public- health emergencies is being able to maintain a reasonable supply that you may never use. But having it in close proximity to the emergency department is great, if you have that kind of space.” 14 JULY 2011 EMS WORLD Who Are Those People, and Where Are They Going? The goal of the Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute is to foster business and trade opportunities for Israeli companies. The U.S. delegation visited the Institute to meet with vendors offering products of potential interest to emergency medical systems. Among the companies represented was trendIT (www.trendit. net), whose software that maps demographic trends over time especially intrigued the Americans. the guesswork out of the process. It allows EMS and first responders to use a map display and zoom in on any location to see the amount and demographics of the people in that area. As an example, in the case of an earthquake or building collapse, dispatch can send forces to the building that has the most people in it.” trendIT RealTime could also be used to recreate pre-event crowd data in areas where people have gone missing, such as a tsunami zone. Crowd-based disasters like earthquakes or bombings are among the most challenging situations EMS crews face. They know people are injured and even trapped, but all they see are piles of twisted rubble and wreckage. What if their cell phones could help first responders locate the victims quickly? That’s an idea that caught the imagination of trendIT, an Israeli- based software company that develops population-analytics products. trendIT’s solution is called RealTime, and it is frankly rather amazing. “By analyzing anonymous cellular signals and performing complex numeric and statistical models, trendIT RealTime is able to provide, in real time, information regarding the numbers and demographic attributes of people in a given geographical area,” says Ori Lavie, the company’s COO. RealTime’s data is shown on a clickable Web-based map: With a few mouse clicks, first responders can find out how many people are in a given area and where they came from. In circumstances where the crowds are free-moving, the software can even predict where they will go next. “EMS and first responders work on assumptions, such as casualty assumptions and crowd control assumptions,” Lavie says. “trendIT takes In nonemergency situations, trendIT can be used to better manage crowd control and allocate resources. “Since there is knowledge about the home locations of the crowd,” Lavie says, “the information can be used to forecast where people will go after the event and clear the correct roads in advance.” Once the crowds have gone, trendIT RealTime allows first responders to go back in time, as it were, to analyze the actual crowd statistics and determine if their preparations were correct. Finally, Lavie, says, “First responders can analyze historic population movements and behavior to predict future events and act accordingly.” The bottom line: trendIT RealTime can make emergency response and planning more predictable and rational—in a world that is anything but. James Careless is a freelance journalist with extensive experience covering public-safety communications issues. Other companies the delegation met with at the Institute included: ➠ M-TACS (Medical Solutions & Tactics), a provider of tactical medical training and equipment – See http://m-tacs.com. ➠ eVigilo, which offers mass-notification/ alert systems – See www.evigilo.net. ➠ TechMer, a maker of digital command and control solutions – See www.tech-mer.com.