Identifying and Tracking Disaster Victims: State‐of‐the‐Art Technology Review

The failure of our nation to adequately track victims of Hurricane Katrina has been identified as a major weakness of national and local disaster preparedness plans. This weakness has prompted government and private industries to acknowledge that existing paper-based tracking systems are incapable of managing information during a large-scale disaster. In response to this need, efforts are under way to develop new technologies that allow instant access to identity and location information during emergency situations. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of state-of-the-art technologies, with implications and limitations for use during mass casualty incidents.

[1]  Bouman Jh,et al.  Computerization of patient tracking and tracing during mass casualty incidents. , 2000 .

[2]  Judith A. Lewis,et al.  Personal Data Assistants: Using New Technology to Enhance Nursing Practice , 2003, MCN. The American journal of maternal child nursing.

[3]  Fabio Monticelli,et al.  Implantation of radio frequency identification device (RFID) microchip in disaster victim identification (DVI). , 2006, Forensic science international.

[4]  I. Pretty,et al.  Contemporary Methods of Labeling Dental Prostheses—A Review of the Literature , 2006, Journal of forensic sciences.

[5]  Jeff Hamilton,et al.  An Internet-based bar code tracking system: coordination of confusion at mass casualty incidents. , 2003, Disaster management & response : DMR : an official publication of the Emergency Nurses Association.

[6]  Leslie Lenert,et al.  Information technology and emergency medical care during disasters. , 2004, Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine.

[7]  S. Zlatanova,et al.  Location Interoperability Services for Medical Emergency Operations during Disasters , 2005 .

[8]  Arnold M. Howitt,et al.  Beyond Katrina: Improving Disaster Response Capabilities , 2006 .

[9]  R. Bert.  The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast , 2006 .

[10]  J. R. Scotti,et al.  Available From , 1973 .

[11]  Brian Neil Levine,et al.  Information-Sharing in Out-of-Hospital Disaster Response: The Future Role of Information Technology , 2004, Prehospital and Disaster Medicine.

[12]  Bernard L. Malone.  Wireless search and rescue: Concepts for improved capabilities , 2004, Bell Labs Technical Journal.

[13]  Rajit Gadh,et al.  Radio Frequency Identification of Katrina Hurricane Victims , 2006 .

[14]  Kathleen J. Tierney,et al.  Emergency Medical Preparedness and Response in Disasters: The Need for Interorganizational Coordination , 1985 .

[15]  C. Kaye,et al.  Folic acid awareness and use among women with a history of a neural tube defect pregnancy--Texas, 2000-2001. , 2002, MMWR. Recommendations and reports : Morbidity and mortality weekly report. Recommendations and reports.

[16]  J G Clement,et al.  New software for computer-assisted dental-data matching in Disaster Victim Identification and long-term missing persons investigations: "DAVID Web". , 2006, Forensic science international.

[17]  F. Burkle,et al.  Applications of telemedicine and telecommunications to disaster medicine: historical and future perspectives. , 1999, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA.

[18]  Richard Garfield,et al.  On the Edge: Children and Families Displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Face a Looming Medical and Mental Health Crisis , 2006 .

[19]  Improving Point-of-care Testing with Automated Identification Technologies , 2006 .

[20]  S. L. Sangam.  News , 2005, Scientometrics.

[21]  Leslie Lenert,et al.  MASCAL: RFID Tracking of Patients, Staff and Equipment to Enhance HospitalResponse to Mass Casualty Events , 2005, AMIA.

[22]  J H Bouman,et al.  Computerization of patient tracking and tracing during mass casualty incidents , 2000, European journal of emergency medicine : official journal of the European Society for Emergency Medicine.

[23]  D. Sweet.  Solving certain dental records problems with technology--the Canadian solution in the Thailand tsunami response. , 2006, Forensic science international.