Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Drive-Through Medicine
If you get your flu shot from while sitting in your car at some point in the future, don't be surprised. A group of emergency room workers from Stanford tested the idea recently through a simulated trial where approximately 50 cars of volunteers acted out various health scenarios with the hope of helping hospital officials develop plans to triage patients during a pandemic.
By keeping patients in their cars, Stanford hospital officials believe they can offer effective treatment while also keeping individuals with contagious diseases out of the hospital--where they would likely spread the illness to other patients. Dr. Eric Weiss, who first brainstormed the idea with a colleague, told the Mercury News that "everyone has cars, why not keep them in cars...We thought this would be a great way to use the automobile as a self-contained contamination."
Of course, not everyone has cars, but most people do. And Weiss' solution is an innovative approach to managing the multiple challenges of keeping a hospital open for patients during a health scare while also keeping the hospital from becoming a vector for new infections. During the trial, hospital staff actually reduced patient wait times by an average of 1.5 hours below expected waits, and based on the trial, the hospital plans to use a tweaked version of the drive-through emergency room if there's a major flu outbreak this fall.