TTI leads effort to transport patients quickly across border with Mexico

Image: Texas A&M Transportation Institute

Led by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI), a team of public agencies is conducting research to speed up cross-border transportation for heart attack and stroke victims.

The team includes personnel from the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso’s Department of Neurology, the El Paso Fire Department and Mexican ambulance operators.

Delays at the U.S.-Mexico border can determine life or death because mortality rates increase sharply as time passes from incident to treatment. Getting patients to the care they need is challenging, however, with tightened security measures at the border.

Evaluating Ambulance Cross Border Operations and Its Impact on Public Health in Border Regions is a project funded by TTI’s Center for International Intelligent Transportation Research (CIITR) and Texas Tech’s health science center. The goal of the project is to work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, international bridge operators and other border agencies to speed up ambulance cross-border operations in the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez region.

“We are in the early stages of conducting meetings with all the stakeholders,” David Salgado, TTI associate transportation researcher for CIITR and principal investigator on the project, said. “We’re looking at current operational protocols and determining where the process can be streamlined to get emergency patients to El Paso hospitals quicker, so treatment can begin earlier.”