At any given time, today's warriors may be injured, in need of immediate medical care, and unable to provide important personal health information to the health care provider. This can happen in the field, at home, at work, or driving down the road. For years folks have been seeking solutions to provide critical information. Bracelets, necklaces, and even red dog tags, have been used to warn health care providers about some aspect of a victim's health. The information has always been limited: until now. A relatively complete medical profile can be carried conveniently on a USB "dog tag".
On first examination the Portable Health Profile, or PHP for short, appears to be nothing more than a jump drive / thumb drive. My T&E unit had a keyring on one end and engraving with no color in it. The engraving says,
Critical Access
Plug into USB Port
The cross is engraved in but not red (as shown in the picture). Does it matter? Absolutely not. As I understood it the sole purpose of this small device was to allow me to carry critical care information - personal health information - conveniently with me in a manner that could be accessed quickly by health care professionals should I need emergency care. Now with anything that requires the use of software we have to remember that SIMPLE matters. I know people who don't know how to turn a computer on. I know other people who know how to make your computer sing and dance. In this case the PHP Jump Drive needed to contain everything necessary to guide me through the process of communicating with it to give it the information any health care provider would need to take care of me in an emergency situation. Could it do that?
To find out I did what I always do: I didn't read the directions and I dove into it to see if I could make it work. Why? Because most of the cops and soldiers I know don't read directions. IF they pay attention to them at all it's usually only after they've broken something and are trying to figure out how to get it to work again. In this case the directions are actually required - but not immediately.
By hooking up the PHP Jump Drive to my laptop I initiated the setup program that installed the very simple communications software to my ocmpter. That done the PHP software then prompted me to type in my Registration Code. Care to guess where I found that? Yep, in the directions. In all fairness and so as not to freak users out, the directions are on a piece of paper that's about four inches square with printing on one side only. The rest is pretty simple. Just fill out the information it asks for. A screen capture is shown below so you can get an idea of the prompts and how easy this is to do.
There are actually two windows there:
The one on the left essentially lets you navigate through the various windows that will open on the right so you can fill out the comprehensive health related information.
The window on the right is where you actually enter and manage the information.
In this example - the Emergency Information window - you can complete things like your date of birth, gender, height, weight, hair and eye color, blood type (that might matter), emergency contact information (so your family or friends can be alerted) and medication information. That single page holds more valuable info than any other form of immediate medical identification I've ever seen before. Sure, a dog tag can list your allergy, but it doesn't list what meds you're on. I guess a single card in your wallet could list all of this info but you'd have to replace it every time anything changed.
Now, having an understanding of what a single window of information is designed to cover, look at that left window again and recognize that it's designed to hold twenty pages of such information. Further, it can hold that much for multiple users. Think about that: I have a wife and four kids. My two oldest are married so add two more to the family for a total of eight. Each PHP unit can hold up to six (6) seperate profiles. In fact, the PHP Multi-User Package comes with:
- 1 64Mb waterproof USB drive
- 2 Mini-CDRs w/ plastic envelopes
- 1 Necklace
- 1 keyring
As your information grows, evolves and changes, you can rewrite the info on the USB Flash Drive, but since the CDRs can only be written once, you'd need to purchase new ones. Obviously you can burn the info to any CD, but regular ones get hard to carry. The mini-CDRs that PHP sells are ideal and available in replacement packs of five for $9.95.
I especially like the USB Flash Drive concept. It's small, easily portable and lightweight. It's waterproof so you don't have to worry about it getting wet in the rain or with your sweat if you're wearing it next to your skin in the summer. The memory size is as big as it nees to be but no bigger, so the price is managed for the end user. If you think it sounds like an interesting idea, check them out online.
Stay Safe!
