MESTRIMAN - AN EXPERT-SYSTEM FOR MEDICAL TRIAGE AND CLINICAL MANAGEMENT OF PATIENTS IN CATASTROPHES

Providing appropriate medical assistance in catastrophes is not an eas y problem to cope with. Some of the problems involved in the task are the diversity of catastrophes and medical emergencies, the insufficien t number of experts usually available during a given catastrophe, the necessity of improving medical performance time, and the lack of coord ination of the resources that may be used. In this respect, the applic ation of both communication and computer technologies may provide impo rtant and useful support in most of the different phases involved in t he management of catastrophes. In this paper we describe ''MESTRIMAN, '' an expert system designed to provide medical assistance in catastro phes. ''MESTRIMAN'' is a module of SIAC, a computer system designed to manage relevant information and data about a wide range of different catastrophes and capable of performing as the central coordinator of t he available resources.