With a donation from TriHealth and Bethesda North Hospital, Miami Township ambulances now have equipment designed to better alert hospitals about patient condition.
The donation is part of a regional TriHealth Foundation grant providing Rosetta transmitters to first responders in Clermont, Hamilton, Butler and Warren counties. According to Miami Township Assistant Fire/EMS Chief Dan Mack, ambulances already are equipped with an EKG machine that sends information to hospitals.
But, he said, different departments use different brands of EKG machines, making it harder for hospitals to receive them all. The new Rosetta transmitters allows TriHealth hospitals to receive EKG readings from any brand of machine. From there, emergency department officials can send EKGs to their catheterization laboratory (cath lab), to printers and to individual doctors via PDA or cell phone. That lets medical 
professionals see the severity and location of heart damage before the patient gets to hospital, said Bethesda North EMS coordinator Jeff Heist. It shortens the time before treatment and leads to more positive patient outcomes.
Heist was at the township’s Central Station Thursday, April 2, to present the new transmitters. Miami Township’s Fire/EMS department received four Rosetta transmitters, one for each ambulance. Mack expects to get them up and running in ambulances by the end of April. He had planned to buy the transmitters after seeing them at a trade show years ago. He estimates TriHealth’s total purchase of the transmitters and receivers cost around $150,000.
He said the transmitters will take paramedics “one step further” in their treatment. Whereas sometimes paramedics had to describe EKGs or send them over cell phone lines, “now the doctors can actually see it.”