Factors affecting the use of a realtime telemetry system in emergency medical services.

We investigated the factors that affected the use of a realtime telemetry system (RTS) in emergency ambulances. During the study, a total of 7144 patients were transported to a hospital in the city of Wonju via ambulance. In 466 of these cases (7%), the Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) used the RTS. Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we extracted variables from the run records, such as the qualifications of the EMT, level of the patient's consciousness and the transport time. The results indicated that EMTs with higher levels of expertise were more likely to use the RTS when the level of patient consciousness was low, regardless of transport time. Conversely, EMTs with low levels of expertise were more likely to use the RTS when the transport time from scene to hospital was long and were less likely to use the RTS when the transport time was short. There appear to be several ways of improving RTS usage in the pre-hospital situation.