Prehospital notification of injured patients presenting to a trauma centre in India: a prospective cohort study

Objectives To assess the effect of a mobile phone application for prehospital notification on resuscitation and patient outcomes.Design Longitudinal prospective cohort study with preintervention and postintervention cohorts.Setting Major trauma centre in India.Participants Injured patients being transported by ambulance and allocated to red (highest) and yellow (medium) triage categories.Intervention A prehospital notification application for use by ambulance and emergency clinicians to notify emergency departments (EDs) of an impending arrival of a patient requiring advanced lifesaving care.Main outcome measures The primary outcome was the proportion of eligible patients arriving at the hospital for which prehospital notification occurred. Secondary outcomes were the availability of a trauma cubicle, presence of a trauma team on patient arrival, time to first chest X-ray, and ED and in-hospital mortality.Results Data from January 2017 to January 2018 were collected with 208 patients in the preintervention and 263 patients in the postintervention period. The proportion of patients arriving after prehospital notification improved from 0% to 11% (p