Marketing triage

Napoleon's Army saved many lives by only treating the more seriously wounded first. Here, Richard Shotton explains how the same principle could save millions of modern marketing pounds.

Imagine you're faced with the following scenario. You're a doctor with three patients in varying degrees of distress, all requiring immediate attention.

But as you're the only medic available you have to decide in what order to treat them? How would you decide?

The answer lies in the work of an eighteenth century orphan, who rose to become the chief surgeon in Napoleon's Army: Dominique Jean Larrey.

Larrey invented the concept of triage. (Incidentally, the term comes from the French verb for 'separate'). This process, developed on nineteenth century French battlefields, involved separating patients into one of three categories:

• Those likely to live regardless of the care they received

• Those unlikely to live regardless of the care they received

• And finally, those for whom immediate care might make a difference

Larrey ordered his medics to categorise patients upon arrival and then focus on the final group, regardless of rank or nationality.

Radical? Yes. Ruthless? Possibly. But this approach, which focused finite medical resources where they made the biggest difference, saved thousands of lives.

Read more at Mediatel.