Fact Sheet
Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders (WISER^®)

WISER (http://wiser.nlm.nih.gov) (Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders) is a mobile application currently available on the Palm, Pocket PC, and Microsoft Windows™ platforms (now including Windows Mobile Smartphone) designed to assist first responders in hazardous material incidents. A web-based WISER (WebWISER) is now available, supporting web browsers for both PCs and PDAs, including BlackBerry.

Developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), WISER provides a wide range of information on hazardous substances, including chemical identification support, physical characteristics, and human health, containment and suppression information.

When handling hazardous material incidents, first responders in general, and Hazmat (hazardous materials) units in particular, must make many decisions quickly. They need accurate information about the hazardous substances, the emergency resources available, and the surrounding environmental conditions. WISER can assist in identification of an unknown substance and, once the substance is identified, provide guidance on immediate actions necessary to save lives and protect the environment.

Features of WISER

• Rapid access to the most important information about a hazardous substance
• Comprehensive decision support, including assistance in identification of an unknown substance and, once the substance is identified, guidance on immediate actions necessary to save lives and protect the environment
• Access to the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB®), which contains detailed peer-reviewed information on hazardous substances
• Intuitive, simple, and logical user interface developed by working with experienced first responders
• Radiological support, including data for 20 isotope substances and a general "ionizing radiation" substance, and tools/reference materials for radiological incidents
• An ERG 2004 Tool, comprising the complete ERG with powerful search capabilities
• Improved, more powerful search capability of the substance list, including wildcarding
• Substance categories support: view all substances, just chemicals, just radioisotopes, or filter by substance categories such as the classes/divisions of the Hazard Classification System. Identify unknown substances, and group the results list, by substance categories
• Enhanced substance printing in WISER for Windows: a new print wizard allows printing of any/all data for a substance

Coming soon:

• Support for Biologicals
• Additional radiological tools and reference material content
• Enhancements to the substance category features, including additional substance category definitions
• Enhanced substance printing support in WebWISER (matching the WISER for Windows capability)
• Collaboration: wireless communications to enable data sharing between WISER users
• Enhanced search capabilities for identification of unknown substances

WISER is a project of the Specialized Information Services Division (SIS) of the NLM. WISER is available for download at http://wiser.nlm.nih.gov.

For more information, contact:

Specialized Information Services
National Library of Medicine
Two Democracy Plaza, Suite 510
6707 Democracy Boulevard, MSC 5467
Bethesda, MD 20892-5467
Telephone: (301) 496-1131
FAX: (301) 480-3537
E-mail: tehip@teh.nlm.nih.gov
URL: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov

A complete list of NLM Fact Sheets is available at:
(alphabetical list) http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsheets.html
(subject list): http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsubj.html

Or write to:

FACT SHEETS
Office of Communications and Public Liaison
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, Maryland 20894

Phone: (301) 496-6308
Fax: (301) 496-4450
email: publicinfo@nlm.nih.gov

Last reviewed: 20 February 2008
Last updated: 20 February 2008
First published: 27 September 2004
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