- Have you ever been in an emergency room and had trouble remembering your exact CHD diagnosis?
- Are you friends and loved-ones nervous that you'll require emergency care and they won't be able to explain your CHD condition properly?
The CardiacKey™ is an initiative developed by the Canadian Congenital Heart Alliance, in partnership with the Canadian Adult Congenital Heart Network (CACH) for an initial pilot project. It is designed to provide detailed, critical medical information to front-line emergency healthcare providers. It is a USB drive which can be worn around the neck, on a keychain, or otherwise kept with the patient at all times and will contain encrypted, secured information about the patient's condition. The CardiacKey™ is only 71.1mm x 19.8mm x 7.98mm (2 1/2" x 3/4" x 3/8") and weighs a mere 0.67oz (19g).
For adult patients and parents of children with congenital heart disease, it provides peace-of-mind by freeing them from the burden of remembering complicated medical details. In addition, the CardiacKey™ can “speak” for the patient in the event that there is a loss of consciousness.
Traditional methods, such as medical bracelets, while ideal for indicating drug allergies, are not very helpful in providing the level of detailed critical information required to provide proper emergency care to patients with CHD.
The CardiacKey™ can contains detailed information such as:
• Blood type
• Drug allergies
• CHD Clinical Diagnoses
• Surgical/Interventional History
• Medications
• An image of the patient’s latest ECG
• Images of any relevant X-Rays
• Copies of echo reports
• Copies of MRI reports
• Patient’s cardiologist contact info
• Patient’s Family Physician contact info
Clinic Involvement
A major component of the CardiacKey™ is that the patient's medical information will be loaded onto the device and maintained by the patient's clinic personnel. This makes the CardiacKey™ accessible for everyone.
This concept has already received extremely positive responses from numerous cardiac clinics across the country.
Pilot Project
The CCHA-CACH pilot project will be focused on the Toronto Congenital Cardiac Centre for Adults. Once this pilot has been proved successful, the plans are to work with the other CHD clinics across Canada to make this important and potentially lifesaving device available to CCHA members everywhere.
If you are not a patient of the TCCCA and are interested in having a CardiacKey™ for yourself - please e-mail us your name and contact information and include the name of the clinic where you are a patient.
