A cerebrovascular accident, commonly known as a stroke, is one of the world's leading killers. Every year, 15 million people worldwide suffer a stroke. Nearly six million die and another five million are left permanently disabled.
In the U.S. alone, more than 140,000 people die each year from the event. About 75 percent of those who suffer one and survive are left with some type of disability.
Survival of a stroke and how much damage ensues depends on quick and accurate diagnosis, which can reduce or prevent further severe brain damage and save patients’ lives – reducing the consequences of the stroke.
But not all healthcare facilities keep neurologists on staff, so this puts many patients at a disadvantage.
In France, where approximately 130,000 people suffer a stroke each year, the answer may be found in telemedicine, or remote, Internet-enabled diagnosis and treatment via videoconferencing and other technologies.
The telemedicine initiative, Project TELE-AVC, was designed to enable emergency room personnel to receive neurological expert consultation anytime, using a telemedicine network. Four hospitals (Caen, Saint Lô, Cherbourg and Lisieux) located strategically throughout whole Lower Normandy region in France are connected via this telemedicine network to ensure immediate access to neurological expertise 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any emergency patient in the region.
The emergency rooms of these four hospitals serve almost 200,000 emergency patients each year.
Other regional hospitals can join the telemedicine network as well, provided they have direct access to a scanner or MRI, and an intensive care unit to monitor patients.
Project TELE-AVC is the first phase of an initiative to connect the entire region through the telemedicine network.
The backbone of the technology is Medical Insight's EasyViz Enterprise Viewer, which uses adaptive streaming technology to ensure smooth and fast image processing even over a slow Internet connection, largely eliminating waiting times for even large CT and MRI studies.
The solution also offers an intuitive interface so it doesn't require extensive training on the part of healthcare personnel.
Once an image is sent by the emergency room to a neurologist, that neurologist simply launches EasyViz Enterprise Viewer from any location with an Internet connection. In a matter of seconds, the neurologist can see the MRI study of this patient in a diagnostic quality, use all necessary tools to perform the diagnosis and show it to the clinician in the emergency room. The neurologist can also see the video stream from the hospital and access electronic health records of that particular patient, which enhances the physician's ability to set the right treatment.
The process is easy and fast to carry out. It feels as if the expert neurologist is in the same room as the clinician, according to Medical Insight, which is based in both Chicago and Denmark.
Telemedicine is believed by many to be an important element of the future of medicine. With remote diagnostics, healthcare facilities can have access to professional services they could not afford before, improving patient outcomes while keeping costs down.
Edited by
Braden Becker
