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November 28, 2009

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High-tech program to help treat heart attacks in the field

Tuesday, Jan. 12, 1999 | 11:43 a.m.

The National Library of Medicine has awarded the Las Vegas Fire Department a $98,403 grant to help develop a new program to treat heart attack victims in the field.

The program is called "Medical Informatics in Acute Myocardial Infarction" and equips firefighters with a helmet-mounted miniature television camera and microphone.

In real time, images from the scene would be transmitted back to fire department headquarters, then relayed to a hospital emergency room or trauma center. The goal of the equipment is to provide physicians with live images of a patient to speed up the decision-making process and improve the patient's chances of survival.

With this "Medicam" doctors can see the patient while communicating with emergency personnel, fire officials said.

The Las Vegas Fire Department was the only fire department in the nation to receive the grant. Other grants went to major university centers including Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, New England Research Institutes and Columbia University.

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