Patients typically have limited access to their vital medical information, which forces them to recall information – often inaccurately – from memory when they aren’t at their primary place of care.

So, in 1999 Maria Gil and her sister-in-law Janice Gil co-founded a technology company that gives patients and health professionals access to electronic personal health records (ePHR) at any time through completely portable flash memory and wireless technologies.

The founders of West Warwick-based ER Card LLC have fostered close technology and medical-industry partnerships to develop their business, making ER Card this year’s Collaborative Innovation Leader in the 2008 Rhode Island Innovation Awards.

The idea for the ER Card devices stemmed from their personal experience with family members and with working in hospitals where patients could not remember or communicate their medical history.

“We never understood why there wasn’t a system to share medical data among hospitals. [Our family] used to share our medical information amongst each other, but thought there had to be a better way,” Maria Gil said.

Maria Gil had prior experience in business and information technology as president of Chase Machine and Engineering and as a member of the R.I. Department of Health’s Health Services Council. Janice Gil worked as a manager and chief technologist of the Women’s Diagnostic Imaging Center at Kent Hospital.

ER Card devices now serve as ePHRs, to help people coordinate all of their health information, including medication allergies, chronic conditions, medications, emergency contacts, and primary care physicians.

“In an emergency, if doctors don’t know your history, they will over-test and over-treat, which increases the total cost of care. The ER Card can decrease testing, reduce health care costs and also save lives,” Maria Gil said.

As obvious as the benefits of the ER Card are, it didn’t catch on right away. “We thought the public would immediately understand and embrace the ER Card, but it didn’t work that way. We had to do an aggressive grassroots education campaign to teach people why they have to be responsible for their own data,” Maria Gil said.

Over the past year, ER Card added momentum on the technology front through its partnership with Purvis Systems Inc., a software engineering and technical services provider with offices in Middletown.

In collaboration with Purvis, ER Card launched Web-based ePHR software that is used by emergency medical technicians statewide. They also developed a Web interface, through which patient information can be accessed by doctors and emergency personnel, which Purvis supports.

Prior to the collaboration with ER Card, Purvis had developed and installed a software system used by emergency medical technicians (EMTs) statewide. The custom-built system is used by EMTs to complete emergency medical reports from their rescue vehicles and transmit them to the Department of Health, as required by Rhode Island law.

Several EMTs requested that ER Card develop a product that could synchronize with EMT reporting software and help decrease the time for reporting rescue incidents, according to ER Card.

By integrating ER Card software into emergency medical services (EMS) systems throughout the state, EMTs have access to patient data while on their way to an emergency, according to Rick Foster, client service manager at Purvis Systems.

“It can tell [EMTs] things like if a patient is on oxygen, where the secret house key is located and if there is a vicious dog on the premises,” Maria Gil said.

Purvis also helped ER Card develop the Web-based portion of ER Card and Purvis hosts that platform.

In addition to the card and Web interface, Gil listened to feedback from doctors and other ER Card partners and worked with Purvis on the development of a USB flash drive technology that patients can carry around with them.

After seven months of programming, testing and review with ER Card staff, the USB flash drive became available in August. The password-protected flash drive is offered in the form of a wallet-size card, jelly bracelet and key-chain tag.

As ER Card adoption increases, the service will be more valuable to hospitals and EMTs. Currently, there are 5,500 members enrolled in the ER Card program in Rhode Island, according to Maria Gil.

“Access to information and having accurate information is really the key benefit we offer,” she said.

In addition to offering medical-information technologies, ER Card also offers information services to clients.

“There is a real hands-on aspect to the company,” Maria Gil said. “We call the patient and remind them when they need a care visit. Because we know every time a medical record is accessed, we will call our customers within 24 hours to follow up with them and ask how they are doing.”

The ER Card subscription costs $8 per month, per person for access to all ER Card services, which include follow-up phone calls and emergency notifications of medication recalls. For additional family members it is $6 per person, per month. The USB flash drive retails for $39.95. •