Introducing REMM: Radiation Event Medical Management

The Department of Health and Human Services has developed its first comprehensive web site to assist health care professionals, primarily physicians, who may have to provide medical care during a radiation mass casualty incident.

Radiation Event Medical Management (REMM) (http://remm.nlm.gov) provides easy to follow algorithms for diagnosis and management of radiation contamination and exposure, guidance for the use of radiation countermeasures, and a variety of other features to facilitate medical responses.

Guidance on diagnosis and treatment will help health care providers by describing:

types of radiation emergencies they may face

initial medical actions at the incident site and or medical facility

specific issues that apply to care in radiation mass casualty events.

Critical information is presented in a format that will quickly and efficiently orient and guide health care providers during a potential mass casualty radiation event. Federal, state and local medical response teams will be able to download REMM files to computers so that the documents are available without internet access. Users can also register for automatic e-mail updates whenever key material is changed or added to REMM.

Future plans include formatting REMM for use on Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) devices, additional multimedia graphics, and more topic areas such as follow-up patient care.

Subject matter experts from the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Library of Medicine (NLM), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collaborated on the content for REMM. HHS teamed with NLM’s Division of Specialized Information Services to develop the site.