Emergency Medical Systems (EMS) agencies, as first responders in medical emergency scenarios, are uniquely positioned to provide valuable data for surveillance and early warning systems.
The PCR is used to gather vital patient information that is used by health care administrators as a resource to identify trends through macro analysis. Currently, the PCR data exists mostly on paper forms and the process of keying this data into a database that can be processed and mined for information can take up to several years. Technology being developed in the lab is enabling real-time collation and analysis of the data.