OTTAWA – It’s a decidedly low-tech method responsible for saving countless lives across the country.
But as it marks 50 years in use in Canada, the MedicAlert system is beginning to have high-tech applications.
MedicAlert began in the United States in 1953 as a scrap of paper pinned to a child’s coat after she almost died from an allergic reaction to a tetanus shot.
It was brought to Canada in 1961 by Dr. Maureen Roberts, a Halifax pediatrician.
Since then it has morphed into a line of over 100 products, all featuring the iconic modified caduceus emblem, but the premise remains the same: giving people with complicated medical conditions a way to communicate with paramedics in case of a medical emergency.
Carrie D’Arville is one such person.
She has a condition called mastocytosis, which when triggered is similar to a severe allergic reaction. But if paramedics were to use a standard response for allergies, for D’Arville it could have fatal effects.
She started wearing a bracelet three years ago after finding herself in London, Ont., with no family around who could assist in the event of an emergency.
“It gives me confidence and some control,” said D’Arville, 46, who now runs the organization Mastocytosis Society Canada.
“You’re nervous all the time but because I have the MedicAlert, I actually feel I can go grocery shopping because I know if I drop, MedicAlert speaks for me.”
The MedicAlert foundation estimates there are over a million users of the system in Canada. They pay a yearly membership fee and also the cost of the bracelet, anklets or other device.
Over the years, other options have emerged for people looking to find a way to store crucial medical information.
MedicAlert-style tattoos are growing in popularity, and the high-tech revolution hasn’t exactly passed the idea by.
There are dog-tags fitted with USB keys to hold the data and applications for BlackBerrys and iPhones.
But there is a reason the bracelet system has endured, said J.P. Trottier, public education information officer for the Ottawa Paramedic Service.
“Technology fails sometimes, computers don’t work, they don’t boot up, scanners don’t work,” he said.
“So you know what, (MedicAlert) is low-tech, but it works.”
Still, MedicAlert is expanding into the digital realm, not by changing the bracelets but how the information they link to can be used.
When someone subscribes to the system, they create a computerized file that contains all the data they’d like medical professionals to know in case of an emergency, often going farther than the few words they can inscribe on their bracelet.
A pilot project is ongoing in Nova Scotia that allows paramedics wireless access to that file via a tablet computer in their ambulance.
By the time they arrive on the scene, they already know everything about the person they are there to see and meanwhile MedicAlert staff have phoned the person’s emergency contact.
It’s a version of the electronic health record that provinces have been struggling to put in place for years, but have failed because of everything from politics to paperwork.
But the fact that MedicAlert is a private, membership-based system that is already digitalized makes it easier to roll out.
“Technology is allowing us to deliver information in a different way,” said MedicAlert president and CEO Robert Ridge.
“Our members entrust us with their information and we provide access to that information according to that contract,” he added.
“That allows us to do a lot of things that are far more difficult to do in the context of the public health care system.”
Ridge says the program is in talks with other jurisdictions to expand the idea.
As part of their training, paramedics are taught to look for a MedicAlert bracelet or anklets when called for help.
Calgary EMS spokesperson Adam Loria remembers once arriving at an assisted-living complex to find an elderly woman passed out.
She had on a MedicAlert bracelet that indicated she was an insulin-dependent diabetic and so Loria and his crew were able to revive her quickly.
“We’re really in the dark if we arrive and the patient is unconscious and we have no one to get history from and there is no MedicAlert. We’re shooting in the dark,” he said.
“With MedicAlert we can narrow it down quickly, not saying that this is the issue today, that the medical episode they’re having is related to their MedicAlert, but the majority of time people with chronic medical issues, they can benefit.”
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