By: Neil Versel | Mar 23, 2011 9:46pm EST
Tags: Dr Enoch Choi | Epocrates | iPad medical apps | iPhone medical apps | Japan Earthquake | mobile health disaster relief | mobile phone emergency medical response | Palo Alto Medical Foundation |
PAMF's Dr. Enoch Choi
Technology has its limits.
At least one American aid team has dispatched to Japan, iPhones and iPads with mobile EMR software and medical reference tools in hand. But they haven’t been able to unleash the power of their handheld computers to help the estimated 261,000 people still living in shelters as of Wednesday—12 days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.
“They’re desperate for basic food, water, fuel,” says Dr. Enoch Choi, an urgent care physician at Palo Alto (Calif.) Medical Foundation and medical director of Jordan International Aid, a California-based Christian aid organization. “They’re out of medicine.”
There is a particular shortage of potassium iodide pills to counter the effects of radiation from crippled nuclear power plants, Choi says.
Jordan International Aid has sent a team of nine disaster-response veterans, including a physician and a nurse, to help in the coastal city of Ishinomaki, which was all but washed away by the tsunami that followed the 9.0-magnitude quake on March 11. But most couldn’t get transportation from Sendai, the capital of Miyagi Prefecture and the largest city in Japan’s Tohugu region, where the disaster is centered.
“The sad thing is, medical volunteers are all jammed up in Sendai,” Choi reports. While he remains in California, he is in regular contact with the aid team in Japan and is preparing for future relief missions once the situation is more under control.
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