Mayo Telestroke Program Deemed Highly Successful

Some very useful telemedicine applications are emerging and being evaluated, particularly those utilizing smart phone apps. The Mayo telstroke program in Arizona was used as a testbed to assess one such app, as discussed in a recent article (see: Mayo telestroke study affirms accuracy of ResolutionMD smartphone app). Below is an excerpt from it: The evidence is building that smartphones are suitable for remote viewing of medical images by consulting specialists. The latest comes from the Mayo Clinic Telestroke Network in Arizona, which found that the ResolutionMD Mobile smartphone app [a diagnostic medical image viewer]...was adequate for evaluating remotely located stroke patients.“CT head interpretations of telestroke network patients by vascular neurologists using ResolutionMD on smartphones were in excellent agreement with interpretations by spoke radiologists using a picture archiving and communications system and those of independent telestroke adjudicators using a desktop viewer,” concludes a [recent] study....“Essentially what this means is that telemedicine can fit in our pockets,” Mayo Clinic Telestroke Medical Director Dr. Bart Demaerschalk [said] “For patients this means access to expertise in a timely fashion when they need it most, no matter what emergency room they may find themselves.” Mayo Clinic neurologists in Phoenix can remotely consult with emergency departments at 12 rural hospitals, mostly in Arizona, that have fixed telem...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Pathologists Authors: Tags: Healthcare Delivery Hospitals and Healthcare Delivery Medical Consumerism Medical Education Medical Research Quality of Care Source Type: blogs