Health system makes cutting-edge telemedicine affordable

With the right kind of equipment, can a video conference between an ambulance and an on-call neurologist deliver the same stroke assessment results as at the bedside in the emergency room? The University of Virginia Health System, after over one year of research, is poised to find out. Previously, AMA Wire® brought you the theory behind the University of Virginia (UVA) Health System’s research efforts to bring telemedicine to the ambulance so they can improve care for patients who are experiencing a stroke. We recently caught up with the UVA team to find out that their telestroke model iTreat is now in action. Andrew M. Southerland, MD, a neurologist with UVA, and his team already have provided this advanced telemedicine service to patients. “We have enrolled seven patients thus far, so it’s very preliminary,” he said. “We would like to see that number increase, and our goal for this initial phase is roughly 50 patients.” “The ultimate goal,” Dr. Southerland said, “is to take this preliminary data and use it to inform a larger multicenter trial to test this across a variety of different health care settings. We’re trying to capture whether we can get the same accuracy of the neurological exam during ambulance transport via video that we would normally get at the bedside in our emergency room.” The set up Currently, UVA has mobile telestroke kits installed in six different ambulances from rural-based agencies that triage to UVA Medical Center. ...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news