I’m all for trying new things. I love to see the new gadgets and ideas that find their way into the prehospital arena. One of my favorite past-times is telling stories about people trying new, cool things. Having said that, some things just set off my skeptic meter. (Some people use a less PC term for “skeptic meter.) For some reason this next story set my skeptic meter needle into the red. I’d like to know what you think. Florida tax-payers are funding a $100,000 camera system for various key-west EMS providers that will allow doctors and trauma surgeons to view the prehospital environment remotely from the hospital. Apparently these cameras will be worn by various EMS personnel and be installed in the local transport vehicles to give the hospital a real time view of accident scenes and patient care. The big selling point being pushed is that, when doctors are allowed to look at the patients on scene, they’ll be better prepared to receive them at the hospital. This visual benefit is supposed to be great enough to justify the tremendous financial, logistical and technological burden of installing, carrying and maintaining all these cameras. I’m not so sure. Here are a few quotes from the article posted at KeyNews.com : Before, we were doing this verbally through radio communications. With this, I can let the doctor view the patient, who might be trapped in a car, for instance, and that doctor can make a lot of determinations then and there, before that patient has been removed or is even in the air. -Key West Rescue Supervisor, Steve Simonaitis OK…what? What determinations can the doctor make right then and there that he couldn’t have made based on my reported description of the incident and the patient? I guess “a lot” would imply a whole list of medical determinations.

Original Source of Doctors Watching EMS Care on Cameras?