For EagleMed, a privately-owned and operated critical care transport service, the adoption last year of an Iridium-based aircraft tracking and communications systems has paid dividends in terms of providing urgent care to those in need of medevac and other aeronautical emergency services.

The company is using the Tracker system offered by Sky Connect LLC. The system transmits flight-tracking data and enables calls between the pilot of the emergency aircraft and the central dispatch center. It also provides private two-way telephone calling capabilities, allowing airborne medical crews to confer with doctors and hospitals with complete patient confidentiality (the service meets the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 regulations regarding confidential communications).

“The satellite technology is enabling the air ambulance mission to perform at a level that has never even been approached before, from a safety, awareness and performance standpoint,” EagleMed Director of Operations Allen Zon told Satellite News. “The Iridium network is enabling secure, consistent, reliable, continual voice communications with our crews anywhere and everywhere they are.”

And with the aircraft in constant communications, the dispatch center can more accurately provide critical information to people on the ground that are making the key decisions on what kind of emergency care to administer.

Prior to the installation of the satellite system, Zon noted that arrival times were based on a calculation using the average ground speed of the aircraft and the distance it needed to travel. But it could not account for certain factors, such as headwind, that could affect the arrival time of an aircraft to an emergency site.

Ground emergency crews “might not do something because they expect to see an aircraft in 20 minutes and then the aircraft doesn’t show up for 40 minutes,” Zon said. “That decreases the care they could have given because they are making their decisions based on time. This system provides a complete, 100 percent reliable accurate representation of time,” which translates to patients getting the critical care they may require from ground emergency responders while they are waiting for an aircraft to arrive. “Our ability to respond and respond accurately is hugely enhanced by this system.”

Zon mentioned that the system has worked so well for EagleMed that he will be visiting a European country, which he declined to name, that is interested in deploying the system in its country-wide emergency response organization.

–Gregory Twachtman

(Allen Zon, EagleMed, 316,644-5464)