Transporting the wounded from the battlefield or a scene of tragedy to another place via air is more often than not done via a helicopter, especially with what we have seen in the movies and all. The thing is, helicopter cabins are not the best place in the world to perform a surgery or an emergency medical procedure on the spot, which is why Thomas Weig and Stephan Prueckner, a couple of senior physicians over at the department of anesthesiology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and also hold the positions of air medical physicians at DRF Luftrettung in Filderstadt, Germany, decided to work with a graduate from the department of industrial design at Weissensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin to come up with an analysis on the work processes and workflow in a helicopter cabin while airborne.
Some of the identified bottlenecks include onloading and offloading patients while connected with monitors and intravenous infusion lines, resulting in a new design concept that focuses on 2 major points – convenient and intuitive use of the monitoring unit and maximum safety and comfort during on- and offloading of the patient. This saw a true-to-scale mockup being constructed and installed in a cleared out EC 145, and the final concept does seem to be rather impressive. Hopefully it can be implemented and save more lives along the way.
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