As they begin treatment of a patient, doctors rely greatly on information that is gathered about that patient’s health status…his/her age, current symptoms, ongoing medical issues, and medications the patient is taking. Obviously, if the doctor does not have access to any of this information then he/she (and the patient) may be starting treatment at a terrible disadvantage.

ER doctors are often faced with this situation. They are looking at a patient who is unaccompanied, unconscious (or in shock), and therefore unable to communicate anything about themselves to the ER staff.

Since there is currently no immediately available centralized comprehensive medical records repository, in the vast majority of these cases disposition of the patient’s treatment by the ER is complete before the medical records are seen, if, in fact they are seen by the ER staff at all.

The risks for patient and Doctor are thus elevated.

Just one of the elevated risks is that of ADR or Adverse Drug Reaction, one type of which is the administering of a drug which has a serious and possibly fatal interaction with a drug already in the patient’s system. This is a risk that would be avoided if the Doctor knew of the already present unfriendly drug. According to the Journal of The American Medical Association (Vol. 284, No 4, July 26^th, 2000, an article by Dr. Barbara Stanfield, MD, MPH of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health) there are 106,000 deaths per year in the U.S. from non-error adverse effects of medications……many of these are of the conflicted drug type and are called non-error because the doctor did not have available to him/her knowledge of previous medication and needed to take action immediately.

This is a risk which, as a result of USB technology, can be easily and economically avoided by the possession of a readily recognizable and immediately readable electronic record on a USB flash drive(s) which people carry with them at all times. The drive, when plugged into the USB port (present on virtually all modern computers) instantly presents a picture of the patient; listing of relevant health issues and events (diabetes, by-pass surgery, etc.); detailed (name, dosage, frequency, etc.) listing of medications; listing with phone numbers of patient’s physicians; contact information for emergency notification; and insurance information.

The USB Life Links website (https://www.usblifelinks.com) explains how the ResQFlash or the ResQFlash Trio can change what the Doctor had no way of knowing into ……..DATA THAT SAVES!