Developing Intelligent Electronic Triage System Using the Emergency Severity Index

With regards to the growing use of computers in the triage along with other parts of healthcare systems, and by considering this fact that the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran suggests the Emergency Severity Index (ESI) as an appropriate triage system, this study was conducted to develop a domestic model for an electronic triage system. The intelligent Electronic Triage System (ETS) was developed based on ESI version4, using PHP programming language and MySQL data base. The system designed to be a web based application. The purpose of this structure was to improve the triage process in terms of precision, speed and ease of use. The ETS, based on input data, determines triage level and treatment room automatically. The ETS was designed to be used in Emergency Departments (EDs) in hospitals. Its main users are the triage nurses, ED physicians, ED head nurses and supervisors. Besides performing triages automatically, the ETS has some advantages such as search and report functions, and also calculating two indexes suggested by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education on triage, including average triage time and the under-triage and over-triage rate. In this study the domestic Electronic Triage System was developed in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, for the first time in Iran. With current trend of implementing computerized systems in hospitals, the Electronic Triage System can be used as a model for computerizing triage at EDs.