The St. Louis Fire Department is using Raytheon's Emergency Patient Tracking System to communicate with medical centers while patients are en route to the hospital.

The fire department's use of Raytheon's Emergency Patient Tracking System (EPTS) is part of St. Louis' Metropolitan Medical Response System, a program designed to ensure the region is prepared for disasters and to improve response to everyday emergencies.

Raytheon said its EPTS is designed for fire fighters and other emergency personnel – using mobile devices – to rapidly transmit patient information from the casualty site to a central database accessible over the Internet.

The EPTS field solution come in two configurations: the EPTS mobile unit, a portable suite of equipment that can be taken to the scene and set up quickly to gather patient data and transmit it through a wireless telephone network, and the EPTS mobile access system, a wireless PDA that connects to an existing laptop with wireless Internet access. The mobile access system is portable or may be permanently installed in an emergency vehicle.

"The EPTS gives St. Louis the first known regional system to track patients in the wake of natural or man-made disaster," said Dr. Jeffrey Lowell, head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Medical Response System program. "The EPTS exceeded our expectations on the ability to track patients in the event of a multi-casualty incident."

St. Louis said its Metropolitan Medical Response System went live last month, after numerous demonstrations and tests in which the EPTS logged in more than 600 patients through nine fire departments and five hospitals.