Keep Critical Blood Supplies Safe For 48 Hours

For Lafayette, La.-based PHI, a leader in air medical transport, the company’s mission has long been to carry out these critical emergency evacuations with the highest level of safety, both for their crews and their patients. A key component to accomplishing that mission has been to equip their crews with the absolute best, most reliable medical technology available.

Nowhere is the need for such state-of-the-art technology as keenly felt as in blood transport: For years, PHI helicopter crews had to make special trips to blood banks once they discovered a patient needed blood, making transfusion in fl ight all but impracticable. Four years ago, however, PHI’s air medical group began using Minnesota Thermal Science’s EMT thermal carrier units, which keep critical blood supplies at safe temperatures for up to 48 hours.

As Dallas-based fl ight paramedic Brent Dalley explains, “If we had no thermal units, our blood transport program would not exist and blood would not be readily available in patient interventions.

” The highly precise passive thermal containers are essential for both the safety and effi ciency that are hallmarks of PHI’s operations: “The units keep blood at the same temperature for extended periods of time. They eliminate the need for disposal of blood that is unusable due to temperature fl uctuation,” reports Dalley.