Cruise ship disasters are making the news more frequently than ever. It seems that more and more cruise ships are stalling, wrecking, or generally malfunctioning, leaving passengers helpless as they wait for rescuers to save them from their vacations. But in the worst-case scenarios, some passengers may experience health problems and need treatment aboard ship. What happens then?
A recent blog post on Open Health News raises a valid point about the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) for cruise ship passengers. The post, “Electronic Medical Records (EMR) for Cruise Ship Passengers” argues that EMR systems could be vital to treating passengers during at-sea disasters.
The post explains that some cruise lines are already using EMR technology:
“… according to Modern Healthcare, perhaps one of the earliest EHR vendor[s] to recognize the market opportunity in the cruise ship industry is Arlington, Texas-based Emergisoft…. Several years ago, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCL) selected the eSeaCare Electronic Health Platform from IOS Health Systems as their fleet-wide electronic health record system for ships of the Azamara Club Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, and the Royal Caribbean International brands.”
It is somewhat surprising to see that cruise lines are ahead of some healthcare providers when it comes to leveraging technology for medical record keeping. Since this is an issue that they obviously care about, they should consider making their EMRs even more effective with automated indexing systems like Access Integrity’s ICDTagger. Doing so will only further leverage the benefits of EMRs, providing consistent, uniform, and auditable reporting with error flagging and trend analysis features. After all, with the increase in cruise ship disasters, it is an addition that will keep passengers safer and reduce cruise lines’ risk for making serious mistakes when treating patients.
